


High Mountain Tea Leaves

by disfictional



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Case Fic, Chinese Language, Episode Fix-It: s04e03 The Final Problem, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Masturbation, Miscommunication, New Year's Kiss, Post-Episode: s04e03 The Final Problem, Shower Sex, TD-12, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:28:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28293105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/disfictional/pseuds/disfictional
Summary: A mountaintop robbery on a Japanese-occupation-era train where the only item stolen was a small case of mysterious tea leaves in a backpack? An ideal Christmas gift, two days late.Sherlock convinces John to travel for tea.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 20
Kudos: 63
Collections: 2020 New Years Fic Exchange





	High Mountain Tea Leaves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Algy Swinburne (milverton)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/milverton/gifts).



> This is a gift for the 2020 New Years Fic Exchange. Grab a hot cup of tea and enjoy!

Xiaowen had been breathing the humid city air of Taipei for the last month, so when she took her first breath of cool, crisp air at the base of Alishan, it felt like a small, invisible humidifier had been plucked from her nose. She watched as a classic red train whistled past a packed line of tourists with tickets to ride to the top. The trains at Alishan were iconic remnants of the Japanese occupation of Taiwan, and it was as if she had stepped back into an era often forgotten in the swift pace of her life in the city. 

Her mobile pinged as the train came to a rusty stop.

_Update?_

M, again. 

She ran a frustrated hand through her cropped, black hair. She’d recently cut it in a more masculine style, easy, no-nonsense. One less thing to worry about. She shoved her mobile back into her coat pocket and held a little tighter to her backpack straps. _Could he wait 5 goddamn minutes?_

As a pharmacist, Xiaowen was an extremely precise and fast worker, and so were many of her colleagues. But no one she had ever worked with was as efficient as M. They were a complete enigma, and though they often drove her mad with all the checking-in, Xiaowen was completely obsessed. M was utterly fascinating. 

She liked to mess with them, a little. 

_Such a quaint spot for a business deal,_ she typed. 

The response came instantly. 

_This is no time for games, Sherlock._

Xiaowen stared at the glowing screen, and someone behind her nudged her forward in line for the train. Sherlock? Who was _that_? 

The next text followed within seconds. 

_Pardon, the above text was meant for someone else. Delete this message and the previous now, or information will be found on your mobile device leading to your immediate incarceration._

“煩白眼 (Fan bai yan),” she muttered under her breath as she resisted the urge to actually roll her eyes. After a few years of working with M, she wasn’t fazed by their methods, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t annoyed by them. She begrudgingly deleted M’s texts, but now her interest in this Sherlock character was piqued. 

_Done. Boarding train now. ETA 11:42_

The attendant took her cherry blossom-themed ticket with a short “謝謝 (xie xie), _”_ as Xiaowen stepped into the cramped carriage. She had managed narrowly to slip on with the tour group ahead of her in line, but now they were chatting loudly and snapping pictures through the train windows. She wished she had waited for a less lively train, but silently cheered when she spotted an empty seat at the end of the carriage. 

Her annoyance was quelled a bit when the train bell rang, and the bright red vehicle started chugging its way through pine and cypress like a toy train under a Christmas tree. 

Her family owned a tea farm, and her mother had a fascination with jade, so she was well versed in the spectrum of greens. Fond memories of Saturdays spent at the flower market, finding turtles at the forest park and dashing through the tables at the jade market colored memories of her childhood. But the color green stood out among the rest. Flecks of mint, pistachio, and hunter green pebbled her mother’s thick jade bracelets and small hand-crafted figurines. Xiaowen had memorized them all. 

The greens of the Alishan forest were rich and complex, but the towering trees smothered in fog were dark and foreboding. The color reminded her of the dried, shriveled tea leaves weighing heavy in her backpack. The complicated leaves that brought her to M, to Alishan, to this train. She rubbed the small, smooth circle of jade on her necklace between her thumb and forefinger and hoped her mom would have understood. She took solace in the knowledge that the only thing that stood between her and the life she desperately wanted was a quick, painless exchange of tea at the top of Ali Mountain. 

The train tracks snaked closer and closer to Sacred Tree Station. 

Xiaowen was eager to get off this cramped train, but took the opportunity to admire the view through the small window behind her. It was peaceful, nostalgic- the complete opposite of her inner chaos. Was she doing the right thing? She trusted M, had trusted them wholeheartedly for years, but should she? She didn’t even know their name. 

She glanced around at the tour group, who had quieted a bit since the train started moving. The two chatting on the other end of the carriage chatted about the weather in undeniable southern Taiwan accents, likely from Kaohsiung. 

“It’s warmer than I expected,” said the taller man as he began taking off his blue raincoat. 

The other man was stockier, but looked strong. “Leave it on. It will be a few degrees cooler on top of the mountain, closer to 15.”

Turns out, the stocky man in the tour group was right. As the train came to a stop at the forest-shrouded Sacred Tree Station, the door opened and a gust of cool, fresh air filled the space. 

“不好意思 (Bu hao yi si),” she muttered, annoyed at the woman pushing into her with seemingly no sense of personal space. 

She couldn’t see what was happening at the steps off the train, but she heard some commotion and then saw a familiar blue jacket sleeve out of the corner of her eye, and a syringe. 

She felt the deployment of the needle and instantly the carriage began to spin. Oh _no._ And it hit her: a sharp wave of nausea. Xiaowen knew she was about to pass out, and in her addled state, she managed to be ready in a seat when her consciousness began to fade. 

Dark green trees and blue raincoats spun into an eerie spiral until it was only blackness.

When she woke up with a pounding headache two hours later in a tiny surgery that looked more like someone’s house than a hospital, the first thing she noticed wasn’t the bruise on her arm or the news of the incident playing on telly or the nurse giving her a wary look from across the room. 

It was her missing backpack. 

********

“I’m not leaving London.”

“Yes, you are.” 

Mycroft managed to sound even more exasperated than usual, which was quite a feat. Sherlock stretched his legs out over the coffee table in the center of the living room at 221B and latched his fingers behind his head, observing the absurdly pretentious man standing across from him. Mycroft looked disheveled. By Mycroft’s standards, this meant a few (grey) hairs out of place and a single button undone on his waistcoat, but disheveled, nonetheless. 

Admittedly, the case held promise. A mountaintop robbery on an old Japanese train where the only item stolen was a small case of mysterious tea leaves in a backpack? An ideal Christmas gift, two days late. Mycroft knew what he was doing, knew exactly what he had to say to lure Sherlock in.

Sherlock sighed. “I can’t leave London now. You _know_ I can’t.”

Mycroft shifted his weight onto his left leg (the weaker one) and raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Why ever not?” He glanced pointedly at John’s empty chair behind him. “According to Dr. Watson’s account, you’d be ready to flee the country at the drop of a hat if he needed you to _tag along_.” 

Sherlock huffed and stood to hold his full height over his older brother. Mycroft was referring to when Sherlock and John had tracked Mary to Morocco. But that wasn’t real; that had happened in John’s fabricated and TD-12-fueled version of events for the blog. The reality had proven to be much messier than the story released to the public, and it had left his relationship with John on the rocks, to say the least. He and Rosie still visited 221B twice a week, but it felt forced. Sherlock walked in quicksand around John: the faster he moved toward him, the faster he was pulled down and away. 

“You of all people know the events on John’s blog were fabricated _,_ Mycroft.” Sherlock spat his name with more vitriol than usual. “In fact, I recall _you_ being an advocate for the TD-12 treatment.” 

“It worked, did it not?” Mycroft half-smiled to himself, and Sherlock fought the urge to shake him. “Pack your bags for Taiwan,” his tone was firm. “This was part of the Magnussen deal upon your return- you explicitly agreed to take some MI6 work in exchange for your exoneration.”

Sherlock stepped over the coffee table, shoving into Mycroft on his way to the kitchen. Tea.

“So I’ll be living the rest of my life in _debt_ to England, then?” 

Mycroft sighed and turned toward the kitchen. His age was really starting to get the better of him, and he leaned heavily on his umbrella. “Must it always be this difficult with you?” 

Sherlock only slammed the cupboard door in response. 

“If you take this case, retrieve the tea leaves and secure the perpetrators, I’ll see about terminating your contract.” 

This offer actually sounded tempting, but there was no chance of revealing that to Mycroft. The thought of leaving London still pulled at him. If he left John now, even for a short time, he didn’t know if he would ever get him back, and Sherlock couldn’t take another rejected return. 

As the amber of tea leaves mixed with the steaming water, he ached for that sense of home he was seemingly incapable of creating without John.

“Why is the British government after tea leaves? Don’t we have enough of those already?” he quipped, scowling at the steeping tea for triggering his Missing John brain. 

His brother shifted his head patronizingly to the right. “We don’t know. We were assured by a trustworthy source that this tea would be of interest.” 

Sherlock poured the milk, making the teacup’s contents look even more like John’s jumpers. “You expect me to leave my flat for tea leaves that may be absolutely mundane? To leave the _country?_ Mycroft, have you finally started making use of my supply of confiscated substances? Even you must know this is a ridiculous request.” 

“I’ve offered you a deal. Will you take it, or not?” 

Mycroft was disheveled and attempting to compromise, which meant that he was desperate. Desperate for _him_ to take this case, specifically. “I’ll take the case on one condition: John comes with me.” 

Not a single facial hint of surprise crossed Mycroft’s features. He had expected this request, then, but obviously hadn’t offered it. “Do you think that’s a good idea, little brother?” The question dripped with patronization. 

“It’s non-negotiable.” 

“How do you think Dr. Watson will feel about this, hm? He has a young child.”

Sherlock huffed. “I can arrange for her care.” 

“The man doesn’t know what’s real and what’s not. We can’t have any potential risks on this mission. And I believe John Watson is a personal risk to your own-” 

“Mycroft.” he cut off his brother, neither wanting nor needing to hear the end of that sentence. “I know your position on John. It doesn’t change mine. He comes, or I don’t.” 

Sherlock brought the tea to his lips. Too much sugar. The sweetness lingered too long on his tongue before Mycroft responded, his entire frame somehow becoming even more stiff and businesslike. Sherlock smiled- he knew he’d won. 

“Fine. I expect a response about Dr. Watson’s attendance by tonight.” Only Mycroft could make MI6 work sound like a state dinner. “Either way, you’re leaving tomorrow afternoon, 3pm out of Heathrow. Good day.” 

He watched Mycroft leave, noticing the extra 2 seconds it took him to get down the stairs. Age was slowing him down. 

Sherlock plopped down on the sofa, resuming the position he had been in before Mycroft’s unannounced intrusion. As much as Sherlock hated to acknowledge it, age was affecting him, too. His body wasn’t just transport, anymore. It had creakier joints and wounds and greying hair and needs. And wants. 

John. He needed to call John. It was a Wednesday, so John was at the surgery, probably dealing with an influx of flu patients. Text? No, it was 12:30- he’d be on his lunch. He could call. It was urgent enough to call. But…

A niggling doubt stopped him from pressing John’s name on his mobile. Convincing Mycroft was one thing. Convincing John? Once, it had been the easiest thing in the world. He had a talent for it, actually. But things were different now. There was Rosie. The status of their friendship was currently under review. The New Year began on Saturday. Text, he decided. He had much better odds of convincing John in person. 

_Come over after work today. Urgent._ 12:34pm

It took seven minutes before the response came. Sherlock had texted during a conversation at the lunch table, then. One of the nurses. The ginger one, probably. John couldn’t help playing into social niceties, but he’d be much better company later if he took the lunch break to eat alone. 

**Need to pick up Rosie from daycare after work.** 12:41pm 

He rolled his eyes. John was going to be difficult about this. 

**But I can come after, if you don’t mind me bringing her along.** 12:42pm 

_Of course not._ 12:42pm

 _It is still urgent, however._ 12:43pm

 **Right. A case, then?** 12:44pm 

_Yes._ 12:46pm 

_Stop chatting up the nurse._ 12:47pm 

**I’m not chatting her up. Just chatting.** 12:50pm 

_Hm. Her girlfriend might disagree._ 12:51pm 

Feeling smug enough to let the conversation dissipate, Sherlock finished his tea and decided a Mandarin Chinese refresher in his Mind Palace would be useful for the upcoming trip. 

He sat in the Chinese restaurant across the street from the Lucky Cat Emporium. John was across the table, making terrible use of the chopsticks. Sherlock studied the menu- printed inside were not Chinese food items, but useful Mandarin phrases. He read them aloud to Mind Palace John, who was satisfyingly impressed. Sherlock’s spoken Mandarin was decent, but his reading and writing still needed quite a bit of work before he could be deemed fluent. Plus, Taiwan used traditional characters, which were more involved than the simplified characters he’d become familiar with when Mycroft sent him to do some investigative work in mainland China after university. He’d only been to Taiwan once before, on short holiday after said investigative work. 

John devoured plate after plate of pork fried rice as Sherlock rambled to him in Chinese about the geography of Taiwan and injuries and tea. Soo-Lin pulled up a chair, occasionally correcting Sherlock on his pronunciation and responding in kind. He had mostly heard her speak Cantonese in the short period he had known her, but being involved in the Black Lotus, she also spoke Mandarin and was familiar with traditional characters. A perfect Mind Palace mentor, really. 

His phone pinged, bringing him out of the fluorescent-lit hole-in-the-wall Mind Palace Chinese restaurant with John and Soo-Lin and into his (empty) flat. 

**Thought girlfriends weren’t your area.** 1:15pm 

Defensive. There had been a slim chance that John already knew about the nurse’s girlfriend, but this response confirmed his suspicions to the contrary. John Watson was a puzzle to him in many ways, but in others, he was so completely obvious. 

_They’re not._ 1:16pm

 _But observation is._ 1:16pm 

_She’s not your type, either way._ 1:18pm 

**What’s my type, then?** 1:25pm 

**Actually, don’t answer that.** 1:26pm 

Smart, John. He knew what he liked, and he didn’t need to hear it from Sherlock. 

Sherlock didn’t want to answer, either. John got so worked up over these things. God forbid Sherlock actually brought up John’s bisexuality- there’d be radio silence for a week. And he needed John to be willing to come to Taiwan for this case. By tomorrow. 

_Don’t need to. See you later._ 1:30pm 

***

John arrived at 221B, Rosie in tow, at 5:46pm, just as Sherlock had predicted. What he hadn’t predicted, however, was John’s sour mood. He greeted Sherlock with a grunt, set Rosie in the makeshift playpen Sherlock kept to the right of the door for her visits, and headed straight for the kitchen to make tea. A mixed slush of snow, rain, and ice was drizzling from the grey afternoon skies, and a decent amount of it had clung onto John’s head. 

“Got anything in?” he called, already rifling through the cabinets searching for any edible substances. He wiped his hair with a tea towel and tossed it unceremoniously in the sink. 

Sherlock sat up slowly, mesmerized by Rosie’s decision process between playing with an unsolved Rubix cube and a cuddly bee. 

“Sherlock?” John asked again, audibly annoyed at the lack of response. This was not the kind of John he wanted to plea with to join him on this case. He wanted warm John, curious John, nostalgic John, even snarky John- anything was better than irritatedJohn. 

He wanted Christmas John. Christmas John from just two days ago. Christmas John, who had sat in his chair in this very room in front of the fireplace and toasted Mrs. Hudson. Christmas John, who had given Sherlock an engraved magnifying glass and had gifted it with a note reading “Because you always know where to look. Merry Christmas, Sherlock. -JW.” Christmas John, who ate three too many of Mrs. Hudson’s mince pies. Christmas John, had put Rosie to bed upstairs and then covered himself in a blanket on the couch and asked Sherlock to join him. Christmas John, who had stroked his hair so gently as he told a story about his Christmas in Kandahar. 

He wasn’t going to get Christmas John tonight. 

Buzzed John, then. 

“There’s beer in the fridge,” Sherlock encouraged, hoping to take the edge off of John’s foul mood. He had bought the specific brand for John’s Christmas visit. 

John took the bait. He couldn’t resist a drink offer, and Sherlock knew it. He felt a twinge of guilt hearing the pop of the bottle cap, but Sherlock needed him to be agreeable. 

John had the fridge propped open with his foot, beer in hand, scanning the shelves for food. He grunted in approval upon seeing the plastic-wrapped leftovers of Mrs. Hudson’s Christmas lasagna. 

“Help yourself,” Sherlock said, gesturing openly to the fridge. 

With John’s gloomy mood lightened slightly (due largely in part to the already half-drunk beer), he sat down in his chair and tucked into the lasagna. Sherlock just watched him eat, observing. He liked to watch John eat; it was a window into his reptilian brain. Intimate, even. 

And John didn’t mind. He was used to Sherlock watching him. It’s possible he even enjoyed it. 

Mid-bite into the ricotta, pasta, and meat concoction, John spoke. “What was so urgent, then?” 

Sherlock shifted. Right. 

“Mycroft stopped by this morning.”

John raised a brow and continued to chew. “Yeah?” 

“He needs me to take a case in Asia. Taiwan.” 

John stopped chewing and glanced to Rosie then back at him. “No. Sherlock, you know I-”

A flash of disappointment crossed Sherlock’s face before it turned to determination. He leaned forward, hands clasped underneath his chin. “I’ve already taken care of childcare. She’ll stay with Harry and Clara. It’ll only be a week. A week and a half at most. We leave tomorrow.”

John swallowed, putting his plate and fork on the small table next to his beer. Then, to Sherlock’s horror, he started laughing. Not the full, wheezing, belly laugh that Sherlock had stored deeply and fondly in his mind palace, but a resigned, ridiculing chuckle. “Tomorrow? Good, yeah, let me just put my entire life on hold to run away to Asia. God, Sherlock. No. I can’t. I can’t do that.” He rubbed his brow between his thumb and forefinger. Working himself up, he stood. The position was reminiscent of their conversation on his birthday at the beginning of the year. That had ended in a hug and cake- why couldn’t this? 

“And you called _Harry_. As if she doesn’t already think I’m a shit father for always dropping Rosie with someone else, and right after Christmas, no less. What kind of dad do you think I am, Sherlock? Did you really think there was a chance I’d agree to this?” 

Sherlock deflated, slumping back into his chair. “Yes.” He forced eye contact with John, meeting his angry, disbelieving stare. “I think you’re a good enough father to realize that Rosie will be in perfectly good care, funded entirely by Mycroft, for a week. I _need_ you on this case, John.” 

John had no visible reaction, resolute in his rejection. “No, you don’t.” Sherlock looked away sharply, unable to face a John that was convinced this was the truth.

“I assure you, I do.” Rosie babbled in her playpen, reminding John of exactly what he would be missing. He started to walk towards her, ready to leave and be finished with this conversation, but Sherlock stopped him. “Please, John. I need you. You know I need you,” his voice came out as a shout that faded to a whisper.

John finally turned to look directly at him, a softness there that hadn’t been there moments earlier. 

He cracked on, “I have to take this case, but I can’t leave. Not without you. Not again.” 

John swallowed, eyes fixed on an unidentified point on the ceiling. 

“I won’t beg. You have some time to think about it, but not much. Mycroft needs an answer by tonight,” he said, all business. Maybe if John saw this as more professional than personal, he could justify it. John nodded once, stiffly, reaching down to pick up Rosie. He hadn’t even taken off his jacket or shoes upon arrival, so he was ready to escape. Sherlock’s chest ached a little at the sight. 

“But John,” he tried, the emotion in his voice betraying him, “Please, consider it.” 

John clutched Rosie closer and sighed heavily. “Yeah, okay. Fine. I’ll consider it.” He couldn't read the answer in John’s face. Sherlock was exceptionally skilled at reading John Watson’s face, which could only mean John truly did not know his answer yet. 

John was going to check with Harry and Clara, then glance at the surgery schedule and inevitably realize he was off the schedule for the rest of the week. He’d think himself into a spiral of questioning being a noncommittal father and a noncommittal friend. After an unnecessary amount of guilty thoughts, he’d ultimately decide he wanted to go, and send Sherlock a text. Something short, like **Okay.** Or **I’ll be there.**

Sherlock cursed the ease at which his mood lifted. 

John gave Sherlock a nod on the way out the door. “Bye bye, Sh’lock!” Rosie shouted gleefully.

***

Two texts came just a few hours later. 

**Fine.**

**What’s the weather like in Taiwan?**

Sherlock smiled, and started typing a packing list. 

***

“Scotch, please.”

John had made it two hours in a business class cabin on a direct flight to Taipei before ordering a drink. 

Might as well follow suit. “Wine. White,” Sherlock ordered for himself. He saw the flash of recognition in the flight attendant’s eyes and quietly hoped he wouldn’t say anything. It would only irk John further to remind him what they were to each other- an inseparable duo in the public eye (entirely _John’s_ doing with his blog, but even so). 

After dropping Rosie with Harry and Clara, John had been silent most of the way to the airport. Usually, this would have put his focus on the case, and he would be asking questions about the basics, prodding Sherlock for theories. But not today. Today he ruminated. Questioned his decision to come on this case. Sherlock spent the ride pretending to study the detailing on the sleek leather seats in the car Mycroft had sent for them, trying to avoid provoking John at all costs before they boarded the plane.

They were flying with a relatively new airline offering the first direct route from LHR-TPE, Jinmen Airways, and the flight crew was eager to impress. 

“You’re Sherlock Holmes,” the flight attendant whispered, handing their drinks over. John didn’t hesitate bringing the plastic cup to his lips. 

Sherlock nodded curtly, hoping he’d move the cart along if Sherlock refused to engage.

The flight attendant gave him an obvious once-over. “Please, Mr. Holmes, let me know if I can help you with anything.” He winked. 

“Jesus,” John muttered between sips. 

The attendant was good-looking, and after giving him a once-over of Sherlock’s own, he deduced that the man flirted with passengers in business class quite often. Sherlock knew that, if he wanted, he could have the man in the loo with just a look, a nod. But he didn’t want. Well, not in the way that he found the man particularly attractive to his own taste, or felt the need for sex. But...

Sherlock had considered picking up random strangers for sexual research, observation, and experimentation exactly four times, but he never followed through. It was a socially precarious practice. There was no reason to be unnecessarily vulnerable when he understood the act itself and the emotional and physical responses it elicited. He _did_ feel attraction- a realization he had come to in university- but he had never had the motivation to pursue sex practically. 

John changed that, of course. Sherlock wanted him, in all senses of the word- a realization he had unfortunately come to at John’s own wedding, but circumstances had never allowed it. His relationship with John was already balancing on an edge and suggesting a sexual component would undoubtedly tip it over. But Sherlock hadn’t missed the signs (he rarely did). The signs that John wanted him, too. 

John caught Sherlock glancing down the aisle at the flirty flight attendant for three seconds too long, raised his brows, and stared intently into his swirling plastic cup. 

“Bit forward, that,” John said with hushed annoyance, taking a large sip of scotch. 

Sherlock smirked and waved a dismissive hand. “It was harmless flirting.” 

John nearly spat out his scotch. 

“Oh, please, John,” Sherlock shut his eyes and leaned back casually into the leather. “As if I haven’t seen you do much worse. Must I remind you of the case of the Zodiac robber?”

John smiled, his annoyance tamed at the old memory, from those special, charged days before the Fall. “Oh god, yeah. The tarot card reader. Not my finest moment.” 

“I know what I see in your future,” Sherlock mocked him, recalling the abhorrent line John had used on the poor woman. She had refused of course (any sane person would, with that line). 

John laughed, a real, hearty laugh, and bumped his shoulder against Sherlock’s. “Hey, don’t make me regret coming.” 

Sherlock smiled. “Don’t worry, John. I don’t see it in your future.”

John relaxed into his window seat, copying Sherlock’s position with a smirk. “So we’re a tarot card reader now, are we?” 

“Don’t need the cards. I’m quite good at predictions as it is.” 

John took another sip of his scotch as the pilot’s tinny cruising height announcement played over the speakers, and Sherlock felt a pivotal shift between them. Perhaps it was John’s surrender to circumstance, or the scotch, or the fact that it was just the two of them traveling alone on a case for the first time in months, but the air between them was comfortable. It lacked the stiffness that had often bordered on coldness in the last year. Christmas night came to mind, and his cheeks heated. 

With the tension rather dissipated between him and John, he popped in his new Airpods (a Christmas gift from Irene) and pressed play on a podcast detailing the murky circumstances surrounding Tchaikovsky’s death. Sherlock already had the case memorized, of course, but it was comforting listening to classical music threaded through a discussion of cholera conspiracy theories. The animated map of the plane route from Heathrow to Taiwan played innocuously on the screen in front of him. 

Without a certain cocktail of illicit substances, Sherlock wouldn’t be able to sleep on the plane, but he could do his best to quiet his brain. John was next to him, seemingly relaxed after the last few sips of scotch. He was wearing an old button-up and tweed trousers (had to change his shirt after Rosie spilled her oatmeal on the first, he deduced), and the two of them were on a case, an international one at that, alone together. Like the early days. The familiarity soothed him. 

But the rightness of it was also terrifying. This case, this trip, had to go perfectly. His friendship with John teetered on it. His brain teemed with ideas of how he could make their time in Taiwan edgier, riskier, more interesting for John without forcing him make the (wrong) conclusion that it was no longer responsible for him to be living this lifestyle. Sherlock had seen the thought cross John’s face 216 times, and each one of them dug a little deeper. It was the most prominent reason for why John hadn’t moved back into 221B, the invisible rope that kept John at arm’s length, tethered to his abysmal flat. 

Sherlock had tried hard to prove that life at 221B would be suitable for a child. He’d bought child locks, a playpen, a Bach for Kids album and an Alexa speaker. He had set a shelf aside for picture books recommended by the leading early childhood education experts. For Christmas, he had carefully set up gifts around the hearth as if Father Christmas himself had brought them- John and Mrs. Hudson loved that sort of thing. John noticed and occasionally commented on his efforts, but they made no difference. John and Rosie stubbornly kept their current living arrangement. 

Sherlock caught John looking at him out of the corner of his eye with a curious expression, as if he was trying to parse him out. Sherlock himself was wondering if John would oppose the weight of his head on John’s shoulder. Best not to find out. 

“How’s the shoulder?” Sherlock asked, trying to distract himself. 

John flexed it a little and crinkled his nose in frustration. “Not great, but the seat’s comfortable enough, I s’pose.” 

“You should try to sleep, John. We’ll have a full day when we arrive.” 

John guiltily looked away. “Right, yeah. Not going to tell me about the case, then?” 

John’s interest sent a hot spark of hope through him. He desperately wanted to talk about the case, but it was imperative for John to sleep for the next few hours. Otherwise, his circadian rhythm would be beyond repair for any real casework. 

“I’ll tell you the details later. You need to sleep,” Sherlock replied, fighting against his impulses to pick John’s brain. 

John shrunk in his seat like a chastised child. 

“I’ll tell you everything, John. But you’ll be unbearably grumpy if you don’t sleep now. It’s for both of our benefits.” 

John snorted. “‘Unbearably grumpy’? Nice of you.” 

“Please do us both a favour and sleep,” Sherlock said, “The scotch should do the trick.” 

John looked away, fiddling with the seat-back tray and clicking it back into place. The glass of scotch sat empty and a bit mocking in the seat cup holder. He mumbled, “It usually does.” 

An hour later, the plane was coasting over eastern Russia, John was snoring, and Sherlock was blasting Tchaikovsky in his AirPods. Halfway through the third movement of the violin concerto, John did something miraculous. In a movement as smooth as Tchaikovsky’s third, John’s head slumped onto Sherlock’s shoulder. 

It was ridiculous. Just a head. Just a shoulder. 

But it was _John’s_ head. _His_ shoulder. All other parts of him melted away in favor of this point of connection. His thoughts about the case ceased, interrupted by an image of waking John coming up behind him, wrapping his arms around Sherlock’s waist, one hand untucking his shirt to slip the other under the silky fabric onto sensitive skin, resting his head in the same place on Sherlock’s shoulder as he now unknowingly slept. 

Sherlock threaded his fingers through his own shirt in the same way, slipping a hand beneath the buttons onto his cold skin, imagining it was John’s. With John’s head resting heavily on his shoulder, he could so easily pretend his Mind Palace version was real. Gooseflesh formed underneath his own touch. 

It was tricky business, though, conflating crafted memories with reality. Especially when they concerned John, who was already living in a corrupted world of muddled memories. 

He had been there, in John’s hospital room after the shooting. He had seen the bag filled with the eerily luminescent viscous liquid hanging next to his bed, had witnessed the nurse start the IV, and had done nothing to stop it. 

He had naively thought the TD-12 would bring John peace- that knowing the truth would break him. But in agreeing to the TD-12 treatment, Sherlock had proven he learned nothing from the business with Magnussen. Once again, sentiment had compromised his critical thinking and worsened the outcome. 

Once again, he hadn’t trusted John with the truth, and now he was living a lie. 

Information is power. Moriarty had known it. Magnussen had known it. Sherlock thought he knew it. But in standing by and allowing that drip to seep into John’s precious veins, he had stripped John of his autonomy. 

It was no wonder the man was drinking himself to sleep every night. 

Reading John’s post-TD-12 blog had been fascinating, but horribly troubling. John’s brain had been more resilient than the doctors had expected (John Watson had always been a severely underestimated man), and had clung to many elements of the truth, obscuring it rather than completely erasing it. 

John knew he had been given TD-12 in his recovery in hospital. He was bound to discover he had really been shot (in his previously-good shoulder and not his face, thanks to Sherlock’s last-minute intervention). The doctors had officially declared the treatment to be mandated by the British government due to state secrets, but John had guessed at Mycroft’s involvement- it wasn’t too difficult a deductive leap- and their friendship suffered for it. John didn’t trust himself around Sherlock, still haunted by fake memories of his own making. Sherlock didn’t know how to make a life with this John, but he also knew he couldn’t make one without him. 

But with John’s head resting on his shoulder, and his own fingers softly stroking his stomach, he could pretend this was normal. 

John stirred, and Sherlock’s fingers quickly slipped out of his shirt lest John come to consciousness. He didn’t, but instead pressed his nose closer to Sherlock’s underarm, nuzzling it a bit. “Sh’lock,” he mumbled in the clouded quality of mid-dream speech. 

Sherlock froze, pausing to bottle the memory for storage. His own name slurred from John’s sleepy lips into his forearm made his entire body instantly pliable. Sherlock knew John’s PTSD dream tells, and he wasn’t expressing them. It was a relaxed dream, then, probably so mundane that John wouldn’t remember when he woke. That meant John would be in an ideal state for Sherlock to run his hands through his silver-blonde hair. 

Sherlock couldn’t resist. He carefully slid his left hand behind John’s nape and onto his scalp, massaging gently, imitating the way John occasionally scratched his head. Sherlock had done this before, in John’s unknowing sleep. But this time was more intimate, having confirmed verbal proof that he was permeating John’s subconscious. 

The comforting melody of Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 started to play in his headphones, and shockingly, with the lights dim on the airplane and his fingers threaded through John’s hair, the heaviness of sleep pulled at him. 

***

“Sh’lock.” 

John’s soft mumbling was a wool blanket, not thrown atop him but woven into his very skin. Warmth emanated from deep within Sherlock’s body, but John was the source.

“Sherlock.” 

Sherlock smiled sleepily. “Jooohn.” 

“Sherlock, wake up.” 

Oh. Of course.

The harsh lights were turned on in the airplane cabin, and Sherlock squinted hard as he opened his eyes to a much less comfortable reality than the one he had been inhabiting in sleep moments ago. His shirt was clumsily untucked, his legs were splayed out long underneath the seat in front of him, and the haziness of slumber fogged his senses. John was looking at him strangely. 

“You fell asleep,” John said, incredulous. His hair was a mess, bending against his usual part and sticking up in places it shouldn’t. Sherlock ached to run his fingers through it, to mess it up even further. But- oh. Yes. That’s how it got that way. 

Sherlock jerked up in his seat, rushing to tuck in his shirt and fiddle with his own hair to hide any hints of a kip (and any hints that he was thinking about his fingers messing up John’s hair). “So did you. Obviously.” 

“Obviously, yeah,” John said knowingly. He ran a hand through his own hair, smoothing it. “We’ll be landing in just under two hours. Breakfast will be ‘round soon.” 

Sherlock nodded, adjusting to a state of semi-consciousness. Sherlock never did anything in half-measures, so when he slept, it was a deep slumber. He needed a minute to reorient himself.

But before he got the chance to adjust to the half-reality that was an airplane cabin at dawn, a woman with hair and a suit far too put-together for having spent eleven hours on a flight approached from first class. When she saw Sherlock, she leaned over conspiratorially to address him, as if they were old friends. 

“I heard a flight attendant say you were on this flight, and I had to come see for myself if it was true. I’m a fan, Mr. Holmes.” she whispered. 

Sherlock was too distracted by the deductions popping up in his head about her desk job, possibly in the art world, her dual residency in the UK and Taiwan, and her pet corgi to respond. Her face was starting to drop disappointedly when John intervened, “Er, thanks. Enjoy the rest of your flight. Breakfast should be coming shortly.” It was dismissive but not rude- John could be _so_ helpful. 

“Oh, and John Watson, too.” The woman stiffened, straightening her posture, focusing her attention on John. “Particularly enjoyed the Culverton case. I always knew he was rotten.” 

John tensed. This case was a sensitive area- the TD-12 had apparently fixated on this memory. Sherlock intervened, “Did you really? Shame. You could have saved me the effort.”

Surprisingly, the woman smiled at this. “There’s the Sherlock Holmes I know. It was nice to finally meet you.” She reached out to shake his hand, and Sherlock shockingly found himself reaching for it. “Iris Lyu,” she introduced. “Have a nice trip to Taiwan.” 

As she walked back down the aisle, John shook his head. “I was hoping getting out of the country would prevent any fan run-ins.” 

The breakfast trolley was approaching. “Buck up, John, here’s the other one.”

The flirty flight attendant served them breakfast, a rather sad tray with a foil-wrapped omelette and cut-up fruit, Sherlock’s with a wink. John puffed up at that, which only made Sherlock cheer inwardly. All the signs of jealousy were there. 

“Anything to drink?”

John answered quickly. “Tea.” 

Sherlock declined. 

They tucked in to their sad meal. 

“This breakfast is shit,” John said bluntly. “And Mr. Let Me Know If I Can Help You With Anything gave me oolong tea, not black. This is a flight from London- he should know better.” 

The pure truth of it made Sherlock chuckle. “Indeed.” Sherlock had one bite of a pineapple chunk and decided it wasn’t worth it.

“Okay. Tell me about the case.” Sherlock took a breath to launch into the details, but John had a caveat, “And Sherlock, if it’s anything like a case of a glow-in-the-dark rabbit I swear I will wring Mycroft’s neck.”

“Shame it isn’t. I’d love to watch.” 

John took a messy bite of the terrible omelette. “I bet you would.” 

And with that, Sherlock switched into case mode. The game was on. 

They arrived at the airport in Taoyuan, a city near Taipei early in the morning, and took the High Speed Rail to the city of Chiayi in southern Taiwan- the largest city near Alishan. It was just before noon by the time they disembarked at Chiayi Station to a sunny and pleasantly warm late December day. Christmas decorations of Taiwan bears wearing Christmas light necklaces plastered the HSR station. John shed his jacket as he shot Sherlock a confused glance. 

“Most people don’t celebrate Christmas in the traditional sense here, but decorations and Christmas songs are popular,” Sherlock said, answering John’s unasked question. “Thus, the Christmas bears.” They popped into the 7-eleven store attached to the station for some much-needed water and temporary Taiwan SIM cards, and the cashier was even wearing a Christmas hat. 

“你們是美國人嗎 (Nǐmen shì měiguó rén ma)?” the hat-wearing cashier asked.

John shot Sherlock a confused look. “She’s asking if we’re American.”

John made a face of distaste, and Sherlock clarified, “不是, 我們是英國人 (Bù shì, wǒmen shì yīngguó rén).” 

“Welcome to Taiwan,” the cashier smiled. 

Chiayi was a typical Taiwanese city, streets crowded with a mix of cars, buses, taxis, and scooters. The buildings were low and unassuming, and many storefronts had a display of their products outside. A few taxi drivers approached them, asking if they needed a car to Alishan. Sherlock scanned the station for Xiaowen- Mycroft had texted a picture- she was to pick them up from the station. 

“Sherlock Holmes? Dr. Watson?” a woman’s voice with a vague American accent came from behind them. It was Xiaowen. 

An influx of interesting deductions came to him: early 30’s (likely 32), pharmacist (and good at it), studied at university in America, currently staying with parents but splits time between the countryside and Taipei, lesbian, questions authority, recently fell hard onto her right side. 

She would make a perfect partner for this case. 

“Xiaowen. Hello,” he offered.

“Hi. Call me John,” John said, reaching to shake Xiaowen’s hand. 

“Come on, then! Let’s solve a case, John and Sherlock Holmes,” she invited, gesturing to her dark green Honda Civic 2008. 

“Sherlock, please.” 

Xiaowen raised an eyebrow. “I prefer Sherlock Holmes. Sounds fancier.” 

She had a casually likeable air about her that made it easy to agree. Sherlock came up with no retort, and threw his carry-on suitcase in the trunk alongside John’s. 

Once they were settled in the car, Xiaowen driving, Sherlock in the passenger seat, and John disgruntled in the back, Xiaowen told them that she was taking them to her family home for lunch.

Sherlock would argue, but he knew John needed to eat. The abrupt change in climate, time zone, and language was already wearing on him. He needed sustenance. 

The drive out to the countryside was beautiful. As they ascended into the mountains, sprawling tea farms and small villages colored the green, grey, and blue landscape of trees, mountains, and sky. The brightness of it was shocking compared to the greyness of London December- the saturation level had been dialed way up. A stark contrast of palm trees and maples lined the roads. 

“Xiaowen, who would be after the tea you were supposed to deliver on December 26th?” Sherlock asked, eager to solve this case (for John’s sake, mostly- he’d be wanting this wrapped up to get back to Rosie. Sherlock would face Grumpy John at 4 days and possibly Angry John at 5).

Until this question, Xiaowen had acted as if there was no case to be solved. But at this, she adjusted her fringe in distress. “That’s the problem- _too_ many people could be after it. I’m just not sure how anyone would have found out what it does, or that I was going to be on that very train that day.” 

Sherlock considered. “But clearly they were after the _product,_ not you. You barely have a scratch. They had access to classified information and a well-organized plan. They could have tried to kidnap or kill you, but they didn’t.” 

Xiaowen swallowed. “Right.” 

John leaned forward, wanting to be involved in the front seat conversation like a schoolboy. “I could be missing something, but why would anyone be after this tea in the first place?” 

Xiaowen’s distress shifted into something more like excitement as she pulled onto a small road winding to a small home atop a hill. The building overlooked a steppe of tea plants. Her family home. “You’ll be able to see for yourselves in a minute.” 

As Xiaowen, John, and Sherlock got out of the car, Xiaowen’s father came out to greet them. 

“Lín-hó,” he said, and Sherlock thought he may have misheard “你好.” 

“It’s Taiwanese for hello,” Xiaowen clarified. “This is my father. He doesn’t speak English, but I can assure you he’s happy you’re here.” 

The kind smile on Xiaowen’s father’s face confirmed it. The man’s demeanor reminded him of his own father. He should probably call his parents, come to think of- no. He was on a case. Tea leaves. Heist. Grumpy John. Focus. 

The air was cooler and windier on the mountain, and Sherlock wished he hadn’t packed his coat away in his carry-on. Xiaowen showed him and John around the outside of the house while her father went inside to finish preparing for lunch. The house was modest, but the view was breathtaking. It overlooked a tea farm that bled into foggy mountains, like a shot straight from a BBC One nature documentary. 

“This is where you’ve been experimenting with the tea,” Sherlock noted for confirmation. Xiaowen nodded, gesturing for the three of them to take a seat at two benches behind the house, facing the tea fields. Xiaowen and John sat on one, Sherlock on the other. From afar, the oolong tea plants looked like giant green caterpillars stacked on top of each other up the mountain, but it was rows and rows of 高山茶 ( _gāoshān chá_ ), high mountain tea, a specialty of central Taiwan.

“My mom died last year, so I shifted to part-time work at the pharmacy in Taipei to come here to care for my father and spend time with him,” she said, notes of sadness in her voice. 

“Sorry for your loss,” John comforted with an understanding pat on the knee. Neither of John’s parents were alive, so he did understand, in that sense. But Sherlock hypothesized that the real emotional chord that struck for John was a daughter losing a mother. The guilt of raising Rosie without Mary physically wore on John. Xiaowen gave him a sad smile- she could see it, too. 

Sherlock hated seeing John like this, and needed to steer the conversation back to tea. “So you got bored and started experimenting.” 

She looked taken aback. Too harsh, then. People were impossible. 

John chuckled. “He means well. That’s him trying to relate.” 

Sherlock bristled. He hated when John talked down about his social skills, as if John was any better than Sherlock at interaction these days.

Xiaowen recovered. “Yeah, I guess I did. Get bored, I mean. I love chemistry, always have, and I grew up around my family’s tea farm- I understand it. So in my free time, I started growing small batches of different strains until I finally got it right.” 

Sherlock leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, intrigued. “What _exactly_ did you get right?” 

“好了(Hǎole)!” Xiaowen’s father called from inside. Lunch was ready. 

Xiaowen smirked. “Guess you’re about to find out.” 

After a delicious spread of fried tofu, fish, and spicy vegetables for lunch (Sherlock had only nibbled, but John had devoured despite being quite embarrassingly bad with the chopsticks), Xiaowen brought out the tea. As Xiaowen’s father did the washing up, the tea steeped in two steaming mugs of hot water in Xiaowen’s hands. 

John was refusing to drink the tea without knowing what it did. Probably wise, actually, but Sherlock was too curious not to try it. He had always preferred practical research. 

“I promise, it won’t harm you in any way,” Xiaowen assured, and Sherlock couldn’t help but believe her- _Mycroft_ trusted her, for god’s sake. 

“I’ve had promises broken,” John said, glaring at Sherlock. 

“No need for dramatics,” Sherlock chided. “I’ll take a cup.” 

Xiaowen set the cup in front of him. It looked like any other cup of oolong tea, light golden. Sherlock brought the cup to his lips. 

It was delicious- light and flavorful with hints of a floral aroma on his tongue. The perfect temperature, it was smooth going down his throat. He expected to feel a great shift, for something to happen, but nothing. 

“Why don’t I know what it does yet?” he asked, bringing the cup back to his lips for a second sip. 

He wouldn’t have been able to identify a shift if he hadn’t been waiting for it, but it was there. He felt a veil of inhibition being lifted. 

“Oh! I think-” 

Xiaowen’s smile grew. “Yes?”

“Is it...truth serum?” Sherlock asked, a million different thoughts and questions and wonders floating in his head.

“Yes,” she beamed like a proud parent, “Guaranteed to make you tell the truth. Well, at least what you absolutely believe to be true at the present moment.” 

John leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms, taking the information in. Sherlock’s eyes widened. 

“Xiaowen, this is...this is incredible. It’s a triumph of science,” Sherlock gushed, and he felt a bit embarrassed. He literally couldn’t stop himself. 

He excitedly asked Xiaowen about the intricacies of the chemistry involved with the process of growing the plant, who was happy to indulge him. They gushed about it like schoolgirls discussing their crushes, with the same amount of obsession. 

An odd expression crossed John’s features at Sherlock’s display, one he couldn’t read. “I have about 1,000 questions I could ask you,” John said, playfully, but Sherlock suspected he meant it.

“I know,” Sherlock said, making eye contact. John licked his lips, and oh god- 

“I like it when you do that,” Sherlock said. No no no. He didn’t mean to say that. The way the effect of the tea on his brain seemed to pull at his mouth was fascinating. 

“Do what?” John asked. 

“Lick your lips.” 

John was struck. His face turned beet red. “Oh, right. Yeah. Okay.” 

Xiaowen glanced between them and (thankfully) didn’t comment. 

“John, you should try some. It will be helpful for the case if you know its effects,” Sherlock suggested, and Xiaowen held out the cup in an offer. 

John’s eyes warily shifted between the cup and Sherlock, but he ultimately reached for the cup. 

“Thank you, John,” Sherlock said, sincerely. “It might help to think of it as simply a more potent truth serum than scotch, without the other debilitating effects.” 

John raised an eyebrow, called out on his drinking. Sherlock did not ever comment on John’s drinking habits. It was one of those things they both knew about but had silently signed a contract not to speak about. “You know, this truth-tea Sherlock reminds me of the Sherlock I first met,” John observed. 

Sherlock smiled in spite of himself. “Is that a good thing, John?” 

John made eye contact with Sherlock as he brought the cup to his lips. After his first sip, John licked the condensation from his lips and answered, “Yes.”

Xiaowen cut in (again, thankfully) to explain that the length of the effects of the tea on the brain varied by the amount consumed and the depth of the steep. So, a few sips would only last for about 10-15 minutes, whereas drinking a full mug may have the consumer truth-telling for two hours (depending on how strong the tea was made). 

John studied the cup in front of him carefully. 

“John, what’s wrong?” Sherlock asked, a little too forcefully. 

John ran a hand through his hair, and Xiaowen leaned forward, interested. “I know it sounds impossible, but I’m fairly positive I’ve drank this tea before.” 

Xiaowen shook her head. “That’s impossible.” 

“I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t genuinely believe it. I know my tea. I drank this very tea this morning, for breakfast.”

Sherlock’s eyebrows shot up. “On the plane.” 

Xiaowen scratched her head. “John, with all due respect, I really don’t think you did. The flavors of oolong are deeply complex, and could easily be mistaken for another kind of high mountain tea.” 

“But I _felt_ it!” John countered. “I chalked my lack of control over what I was saying up to the disorientation of a thirteen hour flight, but now that I know what it feels like to drink this tea, I’m certain I’ve had it before.”

Sherlock sniffed his cup of tea. “I can’t differentiate the smell, either.” 

Xiaowen looked incredulous. “I think you’re pulling at strings here, Sherlock Holmes. How and why would the airline serve my tea, of which there is only one existing truth-tea producing plant, for breakfaston a flight this morning?” 

Sherlock considered. “The _why_ is simple- you said it yourself- anyone would want this tea. It could so easily be weaponized. An airline could potentially use it for people filling out customs forms- smuggling drugs into Taiwan has been a heavily reported problem. Passport fraud is also relatively common. There could have been a specific passenger on the flight who was being targeted.” Usually, Sherlock liked to keep his theories to himself until they had sufficient evidence to be impressive, but under the influence of the truth-tea, he was thinking aloud. 

John snorted. “With Mr. Let Me Know If I Can Help You With Anything serving the tea, he could have been looking to target _you._ ” 

Sherlock snorted. “I doubt it. Like I said, it was harmless flirting. He wouldn’t be subtle enough to pull something like that off. It’s unlikely he knew what he was serving.”

“Oh, I think he knew _exactly_ what he was serving, and it wasn’t the tea,” John was getting heated about it, now. 

His eyes widened. “No need to be so primal about it, John. Your jealousy is showing.” Oh _no._ He hadn’t meant to say jealousy, to bring that issue to the forefront under the current circumstances. 

John sniffed. “Yeah. It is.” 

Sherlock must have been staring at him in open-mouthed shock at the confirmation, because he saw the moment John realized what he had revealed. 

“I just mean- I have to use the loo,” John said, making his awkward escape. 

That just left Sherlock and Xiaowen, whose eyebrows were nearly up to her fringe. “Well, uh. Seems like you two have some secrets.” 

Sherlock nodded. “You don’t know the half of it.” 

Xiaowen’s father chose that moment to emerge from the kitchen with a dessert sponge, and Sherlock had to admit that he had a weakness for sweets. 

***

With the effects subsided and John back to stepping on the truth and shoving it in the deep recesses of his mind, Xiaowen drove John and Sherlock to their homestay for the night, accommodation just a five minute’s drive from Xiaowen’s family home. After the tea-fueled outburst, John, Sherlock, and Xiaowen made a plan to take the High Speed Rail back to Taoyuan in the morning to investigate Jinmen Airways. For now, Sherlock and John would enlist Mycroft’s help to gain access to records of passengers and staff who had been on their flight. 

But first, they had to check-in to their homestay. 

The owner was an older gentleman who had lived in the central Taiwan countryside his whole life, growing and selling tea and running the homestay for more adventurous travelers. He spoke with Sherlock in Mandarin:

“Here are your keys,” the owner, Weixian, said as he passed them over the counter to Sherlock. 

“One room?” Sherlock asked, suddenly a bit wary about spending the night with John. 

“We can give you another room,” he looked over Sherlock’s shoulder to give John a once-over, “if you want.” 

John understood none of this, of course, so it was Sherlock’s choice. He glanced back at John, felt a pang of want, and turned back to Weixian. “We can do one room.” 

“You don’t need to worry here, Mr. Holmes. Taiwan is a very progressive country- the first country in Asia to legalize gay marriage,” he said proudly. 

It should have been rather endearing, but the remark pulled at Sherlock. “Oh, well. Thank you, Weixian. We’ll see you tomorrow morning.” 

“Actually, Mr. Holmes, can I take a picture of you and Dr. Watson? It’s not often that I have celebrities stay here,” Weixian said, waving his mobile. 

Sherlock turned to John. “He wants to take our picture. Is that alright?” 

John cocked his head. “That’s not the Sherlock Holmes I know.”

“Yes, well, maybe the customary Taiwan hospitality is getting to me. Come here,” he gestured to John, putting his arm around his shoulders for the photo. John stiffened, but after a moment, leaned into the touch, sliding his own arm around Sherlock’s waist. 

Sherlock wanted to melt into John. He was in such a good mood that he even put his hand that was not around John’s shoulders up in a peace sign in reference to the often-used pose in photos in Taiwan. John chuckled. 

“Cute!” Weixian said in English. “Thank you, Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson.” 

Their room was small and utilitarian but comfortable. There was an attached bathroom with an Asian-style toilet/shower combination. There was one desk tucked against a corner, where they put their suitcases. The room was a twin, so they each had separate beds. Sherlock told himself he wasn’t disappointed- they had work to do. 

They set up on their beds, fired up their laptops, and with Mycroft’s access, began background checking individuals that were on their flight. After two hours of sorting through their personal information, two people seemed to be suspicious: the first was Edward Shih, a renowned artist known for once holding an exhibition of what he claimed to be Chinese artifacts from the Tang Dynasty that were actually all his own recreations. With the launching of a new exhibit on Imperial Porcelain tomorrow at the National Palace Museum, there could be a connection- he could have been the target. The second was indeed, Mr. Let Me Know If I Can Help You With Anything. Andy Wu, as he was also known, as a flight attendant with another Taiwan airline, had apparently been known to give far too many drinks to customers in whom he was interested. It wouldn’t be too great of a leap to think he may have shifted to using tea. However, Sherlock doubted that Andy would have gone to the serious lengths of knocking out Xiaowen on a very specific train to the top of Ali Mountain to steal the tea. It would have found its way into his hands another way. 

It was only eight by the time they finished, but even Sherlock had to admit he was exhausted. The jet lag weighed on his bones. As he was getting older, his humanity more often made itself known. He couldn’t survive on an hour of sleep for four days anymore. He had to eat and drink. He had...needs and urges. 

John yawned, and there was a knock on the door. 

Sherlock stood up to open it- to his surprise, it was Xiaowen with a few bags of fried food. 

“Hey, can I come in? I brought dinner. Weixian and I go way back.” 

Sherlock stood aside and gestured for her to come in. She didn’t hesitate, taking off her shoes, striding right into the room, handing one bag of food each to John and Sherlock, and sitting on the edge of John’s bed cross-legged. She stuck a wooden stick into a piece of fried chicken and popped it into her mouth. 

“Try it!” she urged, and Sherlock eyed the chicken hesitantly. This wasn’t exactly brain food, but he _was_ hungry, now that the tantalizing smell of fried food and white pepper clouded his nostrils and judgment. He popped one into his mouth and closed his eyes in pure enjoyment. Xiaowen noticed. “I told you so.” 

John did the same, and proceeded to inhale the remaining pieces of chicken. 

“Have you found any suspects?” she prompted. 

John spoke around a bite of chicken. “Two.” 

“Edward Shih could have been the target- do you know him?” Sherlock asked.

Xiaowen laughed. “Do I _know_ him? My girlfriend used to _date_ him!” 

Sherlock and John exchanged knowing glances. Sherlock put his paper bag of chicken down on the nightstand. “Xiaowen, does your girlfriend know about the tea?” 

She furrowed her brow. “She’s the only person I’ve told, besides you and M.” 

Sherlock tilted his head in sympathy, but Xiaowen rejected this. 

“She wouldn’t tell anyone. She wouldn’t. She loves me.” 

John turned to her. “I used to think my wife would never hurt anyone, and it turns out she was a professional assassin. Love makes you see what you want to see.” Sherlock shot a meaningful glance to John. That must have been difficult for him to admit. 

Xiaowen shook her head. “She wouldn’t,” she whispered, more to herself than for John or Sherlock. “Not Amy.” 

John continued, “If she- Amy- knew about the tea leaves, she might try to use them against him. Catch him in the act, so to say.” 

Sherlock wondered if the chemical makeup of the truth-tea had attached itself to any parts of John’s memory altered or suppressed by the TD-12. Mary had caught Sherlock in the act- she had known about his feelings toward John, and she had shot him for it. Sherlock had strong evidence that she had also known about John’s feelings for Sherlock, even if he hadn’t confronted them himself. 

Xiaowen took out her mobile, starting to dial her girlfriend. “I’m going to call her, sort this out. This is just a misunderstanding.” 

Sherlock leapt forward. “Don’t! She can’t know you suspect her. If it _is_ true that she leaked the information, she’ll likely inform the ones who actually stole the tea, and we’ll have a much harder time finding _those_ people- they’re the ones we need to worry about.” 

The mobile was on speaker, and Amy answered, “喂 ( _Wei_ ).” Sherlock held his breath. When Xiaowen pressed “cancel,” he released it. 

“Thank you.” 

Xiaowen gave him a meaningful look. “I hope you’re wrong, Sherlock Holmes.” 

John looked away. He knew exactly how she felt. 

***

After the tension dissipated over more fried chicken, the three of them discussed the plan for the next day, agreeing to take the High Speed Rail back north to Taipei for a trip to the iconic National Palace Museum, where they hoped to glean some information about why the truth tea had been served on their flight. 

“How did you and Amy meet?” Sherlock asked, partly curious, but more hoping to find out how much of a threat she potentially posed. 

Xiaowen smiled. “She comes to my pharmacy. She’s a graphic designer, and her office is just around the corner.” 

“Is that how she met Edward? She made marketing materials for his art exhibits?” Sherlock asked, and Xiaowen visibly shrunk. She had thought Sherlock was trying to make conversation, not investigate.

She nodded. “That was a long time ago, now. It’s been two years since they broke up. Amy and I have been together for a year and a half.” 

John yawned and stretched in an obvious display. Xiaowen took the hint and stood. “Sorry, I know you both must be tired from jet lag. I just have one last thing.” She pulled a bag out of her back pocket. Sherlock recognized the smell. It was the truth tea. 

John furrowed his brow, not wanting to get near the stuff again. “The tea?” 

“I know it _seems_ just like the truth tea, but it’s our regular high mountain tea. No truth-telling effects, promise. It’s a Christmas welcoming gift to Taiwan from my dad and me.” 

Sherlock took the bag of loose leaf tea from her. “Thank you, Xiaowen. For this, and for your contribution to biochemistry. If your girlfriend _did_ sell you out, you deserve better.” 

She smiled at him. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning. I’ll pick you up.” Her casual charm was back on, but there was a sadness in her voice Sherlock could not miss. 

Sherlock showed her out with a small wave, which she returned. When he closed the door John wore a gentle smile. It was a soft and unguarded smile he rarely saw, these days, and Sherlock couldn’t look away.

He gave John a questioning tip of his head. “You like her,” he said, almost a whisper. 

He looked away, unable to confront the overwhelming mix of emotions shouting from John’s features. “Of course. She’s a genius.” 

“You like her for more than her brain. You want to be her friend.” John leaned back against the single pillow on his bed, throwing his sock-covered feet up. 

Sherlock followed suit, sitting on his bed to take off his shoes. “Yes. You of all people know I go in for that sort of thing on occasion.”

John threw his hands behind his head. “Did you know you wanted to be my friend? When you first met me, I mean.” 

Sherlock considered, slipping off his shoes, lying down, and plopping his feet onto the bed. It was a bit short, so his feet hung off the edge. He had replayed the exact moment of their meeting in his head extensively, trying to analyze what had drawn him to John. “I wouldn’t have admitted it at the time, but I was lonely. I knew you were, too- it came off of you in droves.” 

“Ta.” 

Sherlock rolled onto his side to face John’s bed on the far side of the room. “I had sworn off friends, John. Thought I was above all that. I thought you were mildly interesting enough to keep my attention, and I knew I could be of use to you by giving you some excitement. The idea of you was attractive to me. But no, I hadn’t known that I wanted a friend.” 

John swallowed. “Right.” 

Sherlock laid on his back and stared at the ceiling for a moment before qualifying, “But I am grateful that I got one anyway.” 

John let out a breath. “Sherlock, I -” his mobile started vibrating, “Shit, it’s Harry. I have to take this, say hi to Rosie.” 

While John Facetimed with Harry, Clara, and Rosie, Sherlock rifled through his suitcase for the pyjamas he’d packed. He brought them into the bathroom along with a towel and some toiletries, and shut the door. He studied himself in the mirror, and was taken back by the disheveled man he saw there. The last 24 hours of travel had taken a toll on his appearance, and he desperately needed a shower. He looked much older than the arrogant young man who had met John at Bart’s nearly a decade ago, now. He felt older, too. 

He turned on the hot water and let it seep into his skin, which was a bit stretchier than it had been when John wrote A Study in Pink. As he lathered his lavender shampoo into his curls, he let his mind wander to thoughts of John running his fingers through his curls on Christmas night, the fire crackling. He thought about how John would have reacted had he turned over and taken John’s first and second fingers into his mouth, tasting them as he sucked. How John might have slid his third and fourth fingers past Sherlock’s lips, one by one. How he might have used his wet fingers to untie the knot on Sherlock’s dressing gown, then smooth them over Sherlock’s stomach and under his pants, and- oh god _._

He was hard. His own fingers loomed dangerously close to his erection, having followed the path he had imagined John’s would take. He didn’t particularly like the idea of masturbating a few metres away from John separated only by a thin door. But, it seemed, his penis did. 

He gave into the want, stroking away the tension from the last day- the plane ride, John’s jealous outburst, his unreadable looks. 

He kept quiet, expressing his pleasure only in huffed breaths through teeth. When he came, it was in gentle spurts. A soft warmth coursed through his body. He felt relaxed for the first time since Mycroft had asked him to take this case. 

When he emerged from the bathroom in pyjama bottoms and a soft cotton t-shirt, John was gathering his own toiletries from his suitcase. Sherlock was grateful for John’s distraction- he didn’t want to look him in the eyes after his furtive bathroom proceedings. 

Sherlock sent a text to Mycroft with details of their plan to go to the National Palace Museum the next morning, and their discovery of the tea’s effects. Mycroft replied simply with, _I see._

As he closed his eyes to sleep, he heard a low groan of pleasure over the run of shower water. 

He hadn’t imagined it. 

***

“Redbeard.” 

They were riding the High Speed Rail train northbound to Taipei, John and Sherlock in one row, Xiaowen in the next up. 

Sherlock gawked. “Sorry?” 

“Your dog. Redbeard. Redbeard was your _dog,”_ John said, as if this was some kind of revolutionary finding. 

“Yes, Jo- _oh_. Yes, indeed.” It clicked into place- the TD-12 had caused John to believe Redbeard to be a childhood friend of Sherlock’s, rather than his dog. Was the TD-12 wearing off? _Could_ it wear off? Or- ah!

“Fascinating! That’s brilliant, John!” Sherlock clapped his hands together, drawing the attention of several passengers around him. The HSR had a strict low-noise policy, and a few other riders shot him dirty looks. John sat back, cocking his head in confusion. 

“The _tea_ , John,” Sherlock whispered, trying to contain his excitement. “The tea made you _remember_ something.” 

“Oh,” a complicated thread of emotions crossed John’s face as the word passed his lips: confusion, interest, excitement, sadness, anger, self-doubt. Sherlock waited for a verbal acknowledgement of any of them, but all John said was, “Right.” 

There was an unspoken agreement between them that they didn’t discuss the TD-12. They had a lot of those, apparently.

It didn’t stop Sherlock from ruminating on the possibilities for Xiaowen’s truth tea based on John’s discovery- ones of which Xiaowen could not yet have conceived. 

The announcement for the arrival at Taipei Main Station played over the speakers, and John stood to bring their carry-ons down from the overhead. A line formed in the centre aisle as Sherlock’s mobile buzzed. It was Mycroft. 

_Swiftly, now. Mr. Shih has been sighted entering the National Palace Museum._

Sherlock flashed the text at John while he pulled the pyjamas from John’s carry-on and stuffed them in Xiaowen’s arms. 

He whispered over the seat, “We’ve got to hurry. Stuff these up your shirt to look pregnant, and hide the lumps with your jacket.” 

Xiaowen opened her mouth to protest, but Sherlock wouldn’t let her. “Now,” he hushed, and she rolled her eyes, but stuffed the clothing inside her green jumper and held her hands over her stomach. 

Sherlock climbed over the seat in one smooth motion and wrapped his arm comfortingly around Xiaowen’s waist. He urged her into the aisle, where the line to the door was getting longer. “Excuse us, my wife needs to go to the hospital,” Sherlock repeated to each new person in line in his best Mandarin, with his most sincere apologetic face. They let the fake pregnant couple by without question. 

“And I’m their doctor,” John called, carrying both suitcases and receiving some distasteful glares as he slid past. 

When the train doors finally opened, the three of them sprinted out into the crowded station and up the left side of the escalator. 

It was raining when they emerged, the chilly wetness of the air soaking into their skin. Sherlock caught a cab at the North entrance, and John and Xiaowen hopped into the backseat. The minute the cab left Taipei Main and cruised onto a street bustling with tour buses, cars, and scooters, Xiaowen ripped John’s clothes out from atop her stomach. 

“屁眼 (Pìyǎn)!” Xiaowen scolded, smacking the back of Sherlock’s head with a clothing item of John’s repeatedly. He turned around to find it was John’s blue underpants. New ones. “I’ll be your pregnant wife in hell!” 

“Sorry,” Sherlock conceded, and he saw John’s eyes bulge in surprise at the utterance in the rearview mirror. “I should’ve made John do it- that’s more his area.” 

John sniffed in annoyance. “Xiaowen, hand me my pants. I’ve a sudden need to smack him.” 

***

The grounds of the National Palace Museum were decorated for the grand opening of the Imperial Porcelain exhibit, banners and signs hung tastefully around the sprawling entrance. The museum building was massive against a green backdrop of trees, built to make anyone standing at the base of the steps feel the power of its grandeur. On any other day, Sherlock would have loved to explore the expansive museum grounds and devise a plan to break into one of the heavily-guarded, temperature-controlled vaults where the museum’s most valuable items are kept. Today, however, they had other business to attend to: finding Edward Shih to confirm he was the target for the tea, and discovering who had stolen it from Xiaowen on the Alishan train. 

Upon entering, they put their carry-on bags in a locker and weaved through the dark hallways filled with intricate jade carvings (the most famous of which was a jade cabbage, which Sherlock found to be an extraordinary symbol for a country), textiles, and gems, following the signs to the Imperial Porcelain exhibition opening. When they arrived, the three of them stood, speechless, at the entrance.

At an unassuming table with informational pamphlets and a banner for the new exhibit, tea was being served in single-use hot water cups designed to imitate a Tang Dynasty porcelain teacup. A small placard next to the stack of cups read in both Chinese and English, _Cups designed by Edward Shih for the Imperial Porcelain Exhibition._

Well. Edward was here for an entirely valid, sincere reason. 

“They’re not after Edward, then,” John stated, pouring a cup of tea for himself in one of the intricately designed paper cups. Sherlock smelled the robust simplicity of the tea, and could recognize it anywhere as regular black tea. John confirmed this with a sip. 

Xiaowen was distracted, and Sherlock followed her gaze past a glass case of Tang Dynasty porcelain statues to the back of a woman’s head adorned with two black-haired buns. It was clear Xiaowen knew her, and was surprised to see her here- it had to be the girlfriend (Annie? Alex?). 

“That’s Amy,” Xiaowen gasped, not quite believing the words as she said them. (Amy, then). 

The shocking part was seeing someone _Sherlock_ recognized whispering in Amy’s ear in a cozy way that was decidedly more-than-friendly. 

John saw it, too. “My god, that’s…” 

“Iris Lyu,” Sherlock finished. 

“The fan from the plane.” 

Sherlock shot a quick text to Mycroft asking for details on Iris Lyu. 

Xiaowen’s face did a series of emotional flips before it landed on anger. “Sherlock, be honest, do you think the two of them…” 

“Are having an affair?” Sherlock finished for her, and he looked back to Iris and Amy, new deductions springing up confirming his suspicions. By their familiarity but inability to conceal their relationship in a public space, it was rather new. Sherlock estimated they had been seeing each other for about two months now. Sherlock had previously deduced Iris’s job in the art world- it was clear now she worked for the museum, and the two of them had come here together. “Undoubtedly.”

Xiaowen closed her eyes in pain, and John shot Sherlock a warning glare. He tilted his head toward Xiaowen, motioning for Sherlock to comfort her or retract his answer or something equally tedious. But Sherlock didn’t need to. Xiaowen accepted the confirmation. She was smart. She had suspected. 

“Okay,” she breathed, pushing down a range of unpleasant reactions. “Edward Shih wasn’t the target. What now?”

Sherlock’s phone buzzed. Mycroft. 

“Iris Lyu has dual citizenship in England and Taiwan. Her specialty is Chinese antiquities, and she was a historical consultant and curator for the Imperial Porcelain exhibit,” Sherlock read from Mycroft’s report. 

John inched closer to Sherlock, leaning over his arm to read the information Mycroft sent. “Sherlock, look. ‘She recently faced backlash for consulting on a film with blaring historical inaccuracies.’ Could that be some sort of motive?” 

Xiaowen turned her back to the entrance of the exhibit, putting her hands to the sides of her face. “John, Sherlock,” she whispered, “The security guard in the far corner. He was on the Alishan train.” 

Sherlock could taste the beginnings of a solution, but they needed to find the proof. “John, go inside the exhibit and make sure Iris stays here. Xiaowen and I are going to break into her office.” He pulled a museum map from a nearby stand and circled it. “I’ll send a text when we need you.” 

John took the map, and Sherlock caught a hint of disappointment in the line of his lips. Sherlock’s stomach lurched, wanting to bring John to the break-in, but Iris couldn’t be seen by the guard, and he needed someone on monitor duty. John nodded once, disappearing behind a large vase as he entered. 

It took Sherlock and Xiaowen twenty minutes to find the office in the maze of the Palace Museum. On the way, Sherlock nicked two ID cards from attendants for each of them. Sherlock’s was a Taiwanese man’s, but he didn’t suspect anyone would look too closely. They had to slip behind a staff member before a carded door closed, their IDs not having the access, but once they made it into the personnel area, the process of breaking into Iris Lyu’s office was exceptionally easy. Sherlock picked the lock and the automatic fluorescent lights switched on to reveal a small room made to look even smaller by filing cabinets filled to the brim, and various posters laid haphazardly over the desk and cabinets. There was a door that undoubtedly led to a cramped broom closet. 

Xiaowen waited by the door to check for any intruders (well, any _other_ intruders) while Sherlock surveyed the room. He imagined Iris sitting in her desk chair and placed himself in that spot to inhabit her headspace. If the tea was in this room, it would be kept at her desk for immediate access, not hidden within a filing cabinet. She kept personal items (a photo of her corgi- admittedly adorable, a small recreation of the carved olive-stone boat famously on display in the museum, and a Chinese antiquities calendar) on the right side of her desk. The truth tea, if she indeed possessed it, was sentimental. Amy would have told her about it. She clearly had serious intentions with her, and the tea would be attached to the idea of her. So, it was on the right side of the desk. He rifled through a few drawers of the wooden desk until he reached the bottom third drawer, where he found a locked compartment underneath some papers. This was it. 

Xiaowen whisper-shouted his name. “Sherlock! Someone’s coming.” 

He heard the footsteps, but he neededto pick this lock first. “Quickly, get between the filing cabinets and throw a poster over yourself. I’ll take the broom closet.” She did as he instructed, and it was surprisingly inconspicuous, but it allowed her little mobility and no view of the room. 

Sherlock was still struggling with the lock as the door handle turned. Shit. He ducked underneath the desk, no time to dash to the closet. He was thankful for the wooden back hiding him from view of the door, but if this person needed anything from the desk, he was going to be caught. He started devising an escape plan when the security guard appeared in front of the desk and smiled eerily down at him. Sherlock attempted an escape around the security guard’s bad foot, but this only gave him access to Sherlock’s shoulder, where he plunged a syringe. 

***

He woke in a dark room next to a heap of cleaning supplies and forgotten museum labels with no concept of how much time had passed. His mind was foggy, and it took him opening and closing his eyes a few times before realizing he was actually awake, in the broom closet in Iris Lyu’s office, his hands and ankles tied with rope. His temple was throbbing, and upon touching it, he felt the beginnings of a bruise. When he pulled his hand away, bright red dots of blood coated his index and middle fingers. Iris and the guard must have thrown him in the closet headfirst. Idiots. The area around his acromioclavicular joint vaguely ached where the security guard had shot him with the tranquilizer. There were muffled voices outside, one of them John’s. 

He forced himself from a slump to a sitting position as best he could with the constraints, and listened through the small crack between the door and its frame. He could make out John on one side of the desk, and Iris Lyu on the other. Sherlock could only see Iris’s chair from his point of view, but John fidgeted, meaning he was strapped down, but his arms were free. 

There was a steaming cup of tea in front of him. 

A different guard from the one who had tranquilized Sherlock held a gun to his head. 

It was unlikely that Iris would order to shoot John, but the thought wasn’t especially comforting when he had to sit by and watch. 

He couldn’t make noise or get out of the closet now. It would only escalate the situation and potentially place John in more danger. Sherlock worked on loosening the knots around his wrists behind his back while he observed. 

“Drink,” Iris commanded. It was a threat, and the word heated the low simmer of hatred for this woman into a raging boil. 

John reached for the cup and took a sip. By the look on John’s face, it was scalding. 

“Finish it.” 

John made a pained sound of protest, but kept sipping until the empty cup echoed when he placed it down. 

“Good,” she said, and even though Sherlock could only see her back, he pictured the accompanying leering smile. “Now we can be honest with each other, Dr. Watson. I think you have some secrets.” 

“I do,” John admitted, and Sherlock’s suspicion was confirmed: she had given John the truth tea. 

“Of course you do.” She leaned back in her chair to study him. “Why are you here?” 

“Sherlock asked me to come with him. For a case.” John was staring pointedly into the empty cup, avoiding looking at her directly, as if that would stop the truth from pouring out of him. 

“I’ve always been curious about that. Does he really need your help?” 

John sniffed, livid about the entire situation. This was John Watson’s worst nightmare: being chemically induced to talk about his feelings. Sherlock saw the thought cross his face of reaching for the gun in the security guard’s hand, but in his current state, Sherlock worried he would be far too obvious about it. John seemed to come to the same conclusion.

“I don’t know. He says he does, but I don’t think I’m much help to him. I think maybe, I used to be. But now...” 

Sherlock squeezed himself impossibly closer to the door. 

“He wants us to be how we once were, but so many things have changed.” 

Iris nodded knowingly (as if she knew _anything_ ). “You got married.” 

“Yes.” There was a tinge of regret, there. It was guiltily vindicating. 

“I read he was the best man at the wedding. Lots of rumors about you two. I have to ask, were you ever together?” 

John shook his head vigorously. “No. Never. It was never like that.” 

For it being the truth, the answer hurt more than it should have. But it didn’t feel like the whole truth. Even before Sherlock stepped off the roof, their friendship seemed to cross an invisible line between friends and romantic partners (not that Sherlock had much to compare it to). 

“Do you want to be?” Iris asked, and Sherlock stopped breathing. It was a question he’d been asking silently, pondering constantly, and avoiding awkwardly for years now. A question he simultaneously ached to know the answer for but worked tirelessly to keep hidden. And Iris had just...asked him. It seemed perverse, to whittle the last few years of his existence down into five words from a mouth that wasn’t his. It was criminal to take this from him. 

John swallowed heavily, and Sherlock echoed the motion. He hung on every blink and twitch of John’s brow. 

John opened his mouth, and shaped them around a single, cataclysmic word. “No.” 

No. No. No? No! No. _No._

John said no. 

It should have been simple. All this time, all Sherlock needed to do was ask. He had wasted countless hours, days, years of his life collecting, cataloguing, analyzing, and interpreting data on the John Watson Question. 

And the answer had always, so awfully simply been: no. 

Apparently, it needed not a single caveat or explanation.

Iris’s voice was far away. “I have to say, I’m surprised. You don’t love him?” 

John cleared his throat. “Not like that, no.” 

He turned away from the door, sitting in the dark for several moments, just soaking in the shock of it. He stopped trying to escape from his restraints. 

_You said your life turned on one word._

_That’s your weakness. You always want everything to be clever._

_Is that sentiment talking? Difficult to tell the difference these days._

Voices were crowding his head, and he tried his best to clear them away, but he was drowning. 

_John Watson is definitely in danger._

Right. Right! There was dampness on his cheek, and he realized with horror that he had been crying. 

“I don’t know where she is,” John’s voice felt distant. Who was “she”? Focus! He could wallow about John when he was out of the closet. 

Xiaowen. He wondered if she was still hiding. She would be terribly uncomfortable by now. 

Iris huffed. “You’re useless.” 

John flinched. That struck a nerve. 

“And so is your pharmacist friend. She left Amy in Taipei to work on this product, and she’s not even doing anything worthwhile with it. Amy said she was going to give it away to the British government.” 

“The tea is the truth, and not everyone wants that kind of power.” 

Iris laughed. “So you’d give it away? Please. I had a microdose and the airline was already interested in a trial run.” 

John considered. “Maybe I’d slip it in Sherlock’s coffee. Could be fun.” 

Sherlock bristled. John burned him, and now he was making casual jokes about their life together. His stomach churned. 

“What are you planning to do with it?” John asked. 

Iris dodged the question. “Oh, this and that. It’s mostly what other people are going to do with it. Bargaining chip, mostly. Don’t forget, I’m asking _you_ the questions.”

John nodded, knowing he was losing this battle. Sherlock gritted his teeth, knowing he could have coaxed more information out of her. “Porcelain,” John said, and Iris’s body language expressed the confusion Sherlock felt at the response. But Sherlock’s confusion was instantly replaced with pride as he realized what it was: a codeword. John instantly reached for the gun looming by his ear, grabbing it with stunning efficiency and turning it onto the security guard as a figure who appeared to be Xiaowen ran across the room and stuck something into Iris’s shoulder. She collapsed onto the desk, unconscious. 

With a gun in hand, John’s entire demeanor shifted to embody a soldier. His voice took on that familiar rough quality that left no room to question it. “Xiaowen, untie me,” he said, not breaking eye contact with the security guard, his grip on the gun unwavering. 

Xiaowen grabbed a pair of scissors from a mug on the desk and kneeled behind John. With John’s chair behind Sherlock’s view of the desk, he couldn’t see what Xiaowen was doing, but he knew she was trying to cut through the thick rope with the scrapbook-level blade.

“You alright?” John asked her, and there was a single syllable response Sherlock didn’t catch. Xiaowen assured John that Iris would be passed out for about an hour, and he nodded. It took a few tense minutes of the security guard glancing nervously between Iris’s unmoving figure, John, and the door, but the rope was ultimately severed and John stood to his full height. 

Sherlock finally managed to wring his hands free, too. 

“How long will he be out for?” John asked, tilting his head in Sherlock’s direction. 

“Probably another half hour or so,” she estimated (quite incorrectly). 

Sherlock reached for the handle, his legs still tied, and swung open the door. “Not quite,” he clarified, and he realized for the first time since he’d woken that his throat was unbelievably dry. The words came out high and scratchy, but it got the room’s attention. 

John’s back was turned from the closet to keep the gun on the guard, but at Sherlock’s emergence, John risked a glance. The security guard saw his chance and bolted for the door, but John shot the wall next to it in warning, just close enough to the guard to scare him. 

“You’re not leaving,” he commanded, and the guard shrunk. “Xiaowen, secure him with the rope, please.” 

Despite John’s reality-altering confession just moments ago, John’s softness with Xiaowen made something pull in his chest. She nodded and efficiently secured the guard’s hands behind his back. 

“Sit,” John ordered, motioning the gun to the ground and back up to the guard, who silently followed. He was used to taking orders. 

Sherlock willed himself to speak directly to John, “Pass me my phone. It’s on the desk.” He didn’t trust himself to say John’s name aloud in this emotionally heightened state. He feared saying John’s name would add a full kettle of boiling water to a teacup already filled to the brim, and he would spill over years of skirting around the unasked question.

John kept the gun trained on the guard as he felt for Sherlock’s mobile. Without response, he tossed it in Sherlock’s direction, and he promptly informed Mycroft via text that they had secured the tea and both members of the guilty party. 

Sherlock’s mobile buzzed: an incoming call from Mycroft. 

“Yes?” Sherlock answered, willing his voice to be as neutral as possible, lest Mycroft immediately pity him for bowing to emotional whims. 

There was a silence a second too long. Mycroft knew something had happened. Thankfully (shockingly), he didn’t pry. 

Mycroft cleared his throat. “I am informing my contacts with the R.O.C. government. You are free to go when they arrive. I need to talk to Ms. Chen.” 

Sherlock motioned for Xiaowen to take the mobile and bring the scissors, and she strode across the room to kneel next to him. 

He _really_ needed to get out of these leg restraints. 

Sherlock cut at the rope while Xiaowen listened and John manned the guard. 

On the phone, Mycroft was doing most of the talking, as always. 

Xiaowen only nodded with a, “好哦. 謝謝你 (Hǎo ó. Xièxiè nǐ),” and ended the call just as the last thread of rope snapped around his ankles. 

“What did Mycroft want?” John asked.

Xiaowen snorted. “ _Mycroft_? Is that seriously M’s name?” 

Sherlock smiled to himself as he stood, though the smile felt foreign on his face, distant. “There’s a reason my brother calls himself ‘M’,” he said, attempting a joke. It fell flat.

“He’s your _brother?_ ” Xiaowen stood to join him. 

John chuckled at this, so casually for a man holding a gun at the guard. “Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

The remark stabbed at Sherlock with a thousand tiny needles. It was not a surprise John didn’t want him if he thought he and _Mycroft_ were alike. Xiaowen gave Sherlock a once-over. “Oh, yeah. I’d kill to analyze that DNA.” 

The conversation was derailing. “Xiaowen, what did my brother want?” he asked, perhaps a bit too testily. 

Xiaowen bit her lip as she studied Sherlock. She had been in the room, so she’d heard John’s conversation with Iris. She was keen as to why Sherlock was on edge. 

The fact that John _wasn’t_ keen made the entire situation hopelessly more pitiful. 

Or he was keen, and was avoiding looking Sherlock in the eye because he _knew_ Sherlock would know instantly, especially since John was still affected by the truth tea. He didn’t know which was worse.

“ _Mycroft_ gave me a Christmas present,” Xiaowen said, exaggerating Mycroft’s ridiculously posh name in an appalling British accent, “He’s giving me a generous grant to open a facility to further research the effects of the tea and grow more strains.”

There was decidedly more than generosity behind Mycroft’s offer, but Sherlock kept his thoughts about that unvoiced. “In London?” he asked, secretly hoping. He imagined Xiaowen coming round for tea, maybe even helping on cases. John had been right- he liked her. 

“No,” she smiled, “in Chiayi.” Joy was radiating from her, and Sherlock couldn’t find it in himself to be annoyed at Mycroft. “I love Taiwan- I couldn’t leave. I suspect you know the feeling, Sherlock Holmes.” 

He nodded. He was surprised to find that he was genuinely happy for her. This would give Xiaowen the resources to control how the tea was grown, manufactured, and used. It gave her power.

Footsteps approached outside. Mycroft’s contacts. He quickly rifled through the desk drawer to confiscate the remaining truth tea from Iris’s (now open) compartment and pocketed it. 

Knowing what the tea had made John say, the leaves in his pocket carried a slight flavor of resentment, now. 

Two of Mycroft’s people entered, and Sherlock compared them against the pictures Mycroft had texted as confirmation. One of them ordered Sherlock, John, and Xiaowen to leave, and Sherlock was grateful John couldn’t understand Chinese. He never did well with bureaucratic authority. 

***

Back at the grand opening of the Imperial Porcelain exhibit, John, Xiaowen, and Sherlock stared at an intricate floral porcelain teapot. Sherlock had done a shoddy job of patching up the cut on his forehead with a first aid kit in the bathroom, and he caught a glimpse of his disheveled reflection in the glass case. 

Xiaowen stared through the glass at Amy across the room (who _still_ hadn’t noticed Xiaowen was here and Iris was missing), and Sherlock was staring at Xiaowen out of the corner of his eye. It was really only John who was staring at the teapot. 

He leaned in and bumped her on the shoulder. “What are you going to do about that?” he whispered, tilting his nose in Amy’s direction. 

Xiaowen swallowed. “I’m going to end things with her. Obviously,” she said, though there was an undertone of insecurity. It bothered him. He’d end things on Xiaowen’s behalf right now if he could. 

“She betrayed you and cheated on you. I hope you know you deserve better.” 

Xiaowen closed her eyes and nodded. “I actually do, Sherlock Holmes. I’m about to approach her.” 

Sherlock narrowed his eyes. “Yet you’re currently hiding behind a teapot.” 

She conceded. “True. It’s just…it’s a shock. I’m going to end things in a minute, but that doesn’t mean my feelings for her have disappeared.” 

“Oi! What are you two gossiping about?” John turned to them, appallingly casual. 

Xiaowen crossed her arms. “I’ve got plans to break up with my girlfriend.”

John was taken aback by the honesty of it. “Oh, uh, right, then.” 

She didn’t miss a beat. “It was a pleasure, solving a real case with both of you.” She reached her arms out to give John a hug. He begrudgingly accepted, his arms stiffly hanging by Xiaowen’s waist. “And you two should enjoy your last night here- it’s New Year’s Eve!” 

Sherlock had forgotten the date amid the time zone shift and the case. His logical brain knew dates were arbitrary, but he despised the idea of starting the year with the shattering realization that John would never want him.

Xiaowen pulled away, and John perked up. “It is, isn’t it? Sherlock, we should celebrate,” he said, smiling gently over Xiaowen’s shoulder. It was hateful. 

Xiaowen turned towards him with her eyebrows raised, and Sherlock was grateful John couldn’t see her expression. “There’s a huge fireworks display at Taipei 101 at midnight. You two could check that out.” 

She reached her arms out, and Sherlock reluctantly stepped into them, keeping his arms still at his sides. As he did so, she went up on her tiptoes to whisper in Chinese: 

“I hope _you_ know, Sherlock Holmes.”

She used his Chinese name, 夏洛克福爾摩斯 (Xià luòkè fú'ěrmósī). The first character of his last name meant “luck,” and it felt starkly misplaced at the moment. 

He blinked several times. She thought he deserved better than what John Watson could give. Oddly, the thought had never crossed his mind. He always rather thought it was John who deserved better. 

The sentiment was clearly meant to be kind, but it only fueled his bitterness. He swallowed it down in favor of a forced, polite smile. 

“We’ll be in touch, Xiaowen. Thank you for your help.” 

She pulled away. “Safe travels,” she said, steeling herself to approach Amy across the room. “Wish me luck, here, guys.”

Sherlock bitterly thought that if she just slipped the girlfriend some truth tea in one of the gaudy imperial porcelain knock-off paper cups, years of partnership would be over remarkably quickly. 

John was a better sport. “Good luck.” 

***

It had stopped raining by the time they arrived at the Grand Hyatt hotel near Taipei 101, but the weather did nothing to clear Sherlock’s dark mood. It was already late evening, and traffic in Taipei had been at a standstill, exacerbating the uncomfortable tension in the cab from the museum to the hotel. Their flight was arranged for the following morning, despite Sherlock’s best efforts to find a route that would get them out of Taiwan tonight. 

But upon checking into the elaborately decorated lobby for New Year’s, he discovered that Mycroft had booked two separate rooms. However passive aggressive a move on Mycroft’s part, it quieted his anxiety about revealing the source of his foul mood to John while confined in a small space together. He had come too close in the cab. 

As the receptionist handed Sherlock their (very separate) keys, John reveled at the lobby. “This place is insane,” he said, his mouth agape at the grand piano automatically playing Auld Lang Syne in front of the marble fountain. “Mycroft must have spent a pretty penny.” 

Sherlock swallowed. He was still getting used to speaking to this post-John Watson Question John. “Late Christmas gift, perhaps.” Sherlock stiffly handed John his key. 

John eyed at the difference in the scribbled numbers on the paper key holders they were each holding. “Two rooms?” John asked, and the undertone of disappointment Sherlock undoubtedly heard was like turning a knife in the wound. 

Sherlock bristled. “Of course,” he said, turning to walk toward the elevator. 

“Wait!” John called, and Sherlock hated how easily his feet slowed. “Can I at least patch up the cut on your head? Check your vitals?” he fussed, and Sherlock couldn’t stand it. He loathed John’s concern. 

But apparently he was indulging his masochistic side, because he agreed for John to do this one thing. Then he could wallow alone in luxury. And with a better bandage. 

The elevator ride up to the fifth floor was tense. Even while avoiding looking at John, he could tell he had something he couldn’t decide how to say. Sherlock planned to curb any sort of further explanation or pity- it would only be embarrassing for both of them. 

He was still reeling in the sheer disbelief of John’s rejection. Sherlock’s greatest utility was his ability to read people and make deductions, and this was ultimate proof that sentiment defied logic. He swore the signs had been there. On the plane here, at Xiaowen’s family home, on Christmas night, at John’s stag-do, in furtive glances, in gentle touches. Even now, on this elevator, Sherlock felt John’s eyes on him in a way that was decidedly not platonic. 

But he had scientifically been proven wrong. The tea quite literally didn’t lie. 

John quietly followed him to the room number on Sherlock’s key. He kept his distance, as if he knew that walking too close to Sherlock might burst an invisible barrier keeping him from blowing up. 

He opened the door to the room to find a large king-size bed with plush downy sheets, a balcony with a beautiful view of the city and Taipei 101, and a bottle of champagne and flutes above the mini fridge with a note reading “新年快樂 (Xīnnián kuàilè),” but it was an entirely _un_ happy New Year. The luxury mocked him. 

John came in behind him and eyed the champagne. “Can I pour you a drink?” 

Sherlock turned and narrowed his eyes. “I thought you were here to patch me up.” 

John licked his lips, and Sherlock had to pull his eyes away from the new wetness there. “Okay,” he conceded, “Bathroom then.”

Sherlock sat on the toilet seat as John pulled a first aid kit from his bag. He placed it on the luxe marble sink and meticulously began taking out various supplies: antibacterial ointment, gauze, tape. 

As much as he’d hurt him today, John’s fastidious doctor touch was soothing. He held Sherlock’s hair back as he cleaned the wound, and Sherlock was once again transported through touch-memory to Christmas night. But the second he felt himself lean into John’s steady fingers, Sherlock stiffened again. 

“Sherlock, relax,” John said gently, moving the fingers currently in his hair in a circular motion as if to pet him. 

It was manipulative and wrong but it felt so familiarly _good_. “John,” Sherlock breathed, and John actually gripped onto Sherlock’s hair. Sherlock’s eyes snapped shut, his mouth dry. He couldn’t just let this lie between them any longer. “You said…”

John let go of Sherlock to place a small piece of gauze over the cut. Sherlock instantly missed John’s fingers in his hair, and he couldn’t repeat what John had said, couldn’t materialize his greatest miscalculation.

John didn’t speak until he secured the piece of tape over the gauze. 

“I lied.”

Sherlock’s newly-bandaged head shot up to look at John. “What?” Ridiculous. Gaslighting. “I don’t know what you…” 

John shook his head and took a breath, preparing to tell a story that Sherlock wouldn’t believe. “Earlier, in the office. I didn’t drink the truth tea.”

John was looking at him as if this should’ve pieced together all the pieces of a giant puzzle, but it didn’t. It didn’t make sense. “John, you did. Don’t lie to me,” he said, his voice quiet and pleading. This was cruel. 

John ran a frustrated hand through golden grey hair. “No, just. Let me explain, okay?” He leaned on the sink and looked extremely uncomfortable. “Could we, maybe, go back into the room?” 

Sherlock swallowed, toying with the idea of throwing John out and having a well-deserved strop, but he was weak to John’s requests and his own curiosity. “Fine.” 

John had the audacity to sit on the bed and patted the spot next to him. Sherlock pointedly pulled out the chair from under the desk and sank into it instead. 

“Right. So,” John started, awkwardly. 

“Explain,” Sherlock cut in. 

John let his annoyance show for a moment before realizing that was Sherlock’s goal. “I panicked, when I couldn’t find Iris. Somehow she slipped away without me noticing.” 

“I do it all the time,” Sherlock said, and John grit his teeth in order not to bite back with a response. 

“She wasn’t in her office when I got there, but I could tell there had been some sort of altercation there.” 

Sherlock nodded. The guard had dragged him into the closet after he had been knocked out. 

“My timing must have been perfect. With you secured, Iris and the guard had gone to look for me and Xiaowen back at the exhibit. But-”

“Xiaowen was hiding,” Sherlock finished. “She knew it was you and told you I was in the closet. But she didn’t want to get out of the tight space until she was sure they weren’t coming back.” 

“Yes,” John confirmed, and he looked pained. “Sherlock, when I opened that closet door and saw you passed out like that, the cut on your forehead...I wanted to kill whoever put you there.” 

A lump formed in Sherlock’s throat. He couldn’t find a snarky response. 

“Xiaowen told me to grab the syringe from your arm, and she figured the Ketamine would also be stored in the closet. It wasn’t. I already heard footsteps outside when I decided I had to get out of there. I gave her the syringe and some bleach and she told me to stall.” 

John cleared his throat, as if retelling the events was harder than living them had been. “I saw the desk drawers had been messed with, so I thought the Ketamine could have been there. I was right.” 

He cursed internally. It must have been the bottom drawer: the one he hadn’t opened. 

“I checked the drawer above it, too- that’s when I found the tea compartment.” 

At this, Sherlock was too intrigued to feign indifference. “How did you get it open?” 

John cocked his head, confused. “The key was on top of the desk.” 

“Hm.” Sherlock considered. Lucky timing on John’s part. Iris must have brought it with her when she came in after he passed out. She had been planning on using it. 

“Then I remembered Xiaowen’s Christmas gift.” John nervously rubbed his hands down his thighs over his jeans. 

Xiaowen’s Christmas gift. The tea. The truth-tea without the truth-telling properties. His eyes widened. 

“We nearly forgot it this morning, in the homestay. Before we left, I spotted it and put the bag in my pocket and never took it out. As Iris and the security guard approached, I switched the truth-tea with the imitation.” 

Oh. _Oh._ John had said _“I lied.”_ The icy bitterness of the last few hours was slowly being thawed by the warmth of hope. 

“They caught me just as I had changed it out. They walked in with a hot cup of water, and Iris steeped the imitation tea in it, thinking it was the real thing,” John explained, finally making eye contact. 

John pulled a small mesh bag filled with tea leaves from his pocket. 

Sherlock swallowed to combat the dryness of his mouth, but words were still difficult. “The truth tea.” The imitation tea seemed to lighten in his own pocket, now that he knew it wasn’t the real thing. “So. In fact. You didn’t…” 

John held Sherlock’s gaze. “No.” 

“You lied.” 

“Yes.” John ran his tongue over his bottom lip, and the spark of warmth in Sherlock’s stomach evolved into a hot flame of need. A need to know that John was saying what Sherlock so desperately ached for him to say. A need for John’s mouth to form around a confession. For John’s lips to consume him.

“About?” Sherlock ventured, his voice coming out as a dry whisper. 

John closed his eyes and drew in a breath. He was beautiful like this, on the precipice of confession. Vulnerability had slipped through the brick wall that was John Watson on so few occasions that Sherlock began cataloguing every detail of him out of sheer habit. 

“Sherlock, I…” 

Sherlock was leaning so far out of his seat he was practically standing. “Yes,” he managed, needing John to say this for him. 

“In the office, I said I didn’t...” John’s hands fiddled in his lap. He nervously looked down at them. “Shit, this is harder than I thought.” 

Sherlock wasn’t sure if it was the false confidence of the imitation tea, or the excitement of being so few words away from solving the John Watson Question, or the mere impatience after years of wanting, but he stood, coming into the space between John’s legs, resting his hands atop John’s well-worn jeans on his thighs. And when John looked up to meet his gaze, he finally, _finally_ , he brought his lips to John’s. 

John huffed into his mouth, surprised. Sherlock inhaled John’s jolted breath like it was cigarette smoke after years of abstaining, which seemed to weaken John. He leaned into Sherlock and rested a careful hand on Sherlock’s cheek. It was a gentle kiss, delicate. And warm. And unfathomably right. 

It was simple- chaste, even, if he disregarded every impulse in him to devour John. Sherlock pulled away slightly, still resting his nose against John’s. “It doesn’t have to be so hard, John.” 

John exhaled a disbelieving chuckle, but he was clearly comforted by the knowledge that Sherlock wanted this. “Right.” 

“Tell me, John,” Sherlock said, whispering against John’s bottom lip. “Tell me what you lied about.” 

John shuddered. “You. I said I didn’t want you. And that I didn’t...love you.” Sherlock kissed him, trying to tell him in every nonverbal way that John had nothing to fear. He could say it. He should say it. 

John gestured for Sherlock to sit next to him on the bed. He let go of John hesitantly, but he knew John would want to do this in his own way, so he sank into the duvet next to John. “I didn’t know you were awake,” John said, “when I said it. I thought you would still be out. Xiaowen said-” 

“She miscalculated. Didn’t take into account my…previous experience.” 

John looked pained for a moment, and Sherlock instantly regretted it. But John’s expression smoothed and he reached a hand out to wrap around Sherlock’s lower back and rest at his hip. It was grounding. 

“I didn’t want to give Iris any more leverage than she already had. If I had known you were listening, Sherlock, I wouldn’t have-” 

Sherlock stopped him. “No.”

John furrowed his brow. 

“No. That wasn’t how I wanted to hear it.” Sherlock brought a hand back to John’s thigh. He could feel the sturdy muscle beneath his jeans. “Say it now, John. Say it for me.” He was practically pleading. 

John opened his mouth and closed it and opened it again. “I want you,” John said, his voice low. Sherlock nearly whined. “And,” he turned, so he could move the hand from Sherlock’s waist to his cheek. “I love you. _Fuck_ , I love you so much, Sherlock.” 

John didn’t need to drink the truth tea for Sherlock to know it was true. The sincerity radiated from him, and Sherlock had to wonder how he’d ever been unsure about the John Watson Question when now, it was so glaringly obvious. He melted into John, the words shifting his brain chemistry so that all he could think was _John John John John. John loves me._

They were kissing again. It was hurried breath and wet lips and rough stubble andsoft tongues. Sherlock grasped at John’s button-up, pulling him impossibly close, wanting to absorb John into his skin. “John,” he whined. 

John met this with enthusiasm, guiding Sherlock with his hands and mouth down onto the bed. He slotted their legs together and ran his left hand down from Sherlock’s cheek to his neck to his chest to his stomach. This horizontal position, well. This was good. 

He felt his body responding to the weight of John atop him in a delightful way. He had sported an erection more than once in John’s presence, quite often because of him, but had always hidden it skillfully. Embarrassment was largely Sherlock’s association with any sort of bodily reaction, but today, he needed John to know just how much he affected him. He pressed his growing interest experimentally against John’s thigh, and both of them groaned into each other’s mouths. 

“Fuck, Sherlock,” John panted. 

Sherlock was drowning in sensation. That sound John just made was a thousand symphonies, the caress of John’s hand undoing the last button on his shirt and urging the garment off of him better than the feeling of a newly stringed violin bow across Stradivarius strings. 

“John, I,” he started, but was cut off by a sharp wave of pleasure as John slid his hand under Sherlock’s trousers to take his erection in hand. 

“God, I want you,” John breathed, his nose buried in Sherlock’s neck. 

Sherlock wanted to respond, _“God, I want you, too,”_ or _“I’ve wanted this for so long,”_ or _“I love you I love you I love you,”_ but the only verbalizations he could manage with John’s hand around his cock were strings of unintelligible noises. 

In his state, he somehow managed to slip his own hand into John’s jeans (bought in 2010 after landing his job at Sarah’s surgery, his brain pinged), and wrap his fingers around John’s (perfect, extremely stiff, thick, leaking) cock. His fingers stilled for a moment, just absorbing the sensation of John against them. He thought he might ask John to take off his trousers, but that would mean taking his fingers off of John for a second. Unacceptable. He started stroking, rubbing his thumb over the head. 

At this, John let out a high-pitched moan and rutted into Sherlock’s hand. “Oh my _god_ Sherlock you’re so beautiful your hands are perfect I’ve dreamt about your fingers around me like this,” John gasped, a string of compliments that went straight to Sherlock’s groin and bloomed in his chest. 

The image of John imagining Sherlock doing this to him was a powerful aphrodisiac. Sherlock couldn’t stand the extra fabric barrier anymore, and he managed to pull John’s jeans and pants down between strokes and kisses (with some struggle). 

John did the same, pulling Sherlock’s trousers and pants off and throwing them to the ground before pouncing on him. Finally, _finally_ they touched each other with nothing between them. It was better than any high, better than a locked-room murder. The need for _John_ entirely took over his reptilian brain. 

“Faster,” he managed, his entire being concentrating into the sensation of John’s strong hand stroking him off. He thought he may black out. 

John growled. “I want you to come for me, Sherlock.” 

Sherlock nodded vigorously, a bead of sweat from his forehead dripping down into his mouth at the exertion needed to fulfill John’s request. 

The steady tandem rhythm they had fallen into slipped as Sherlock thrusted violently into John’s fist. He must have looked completely strung out in John’s eyes, hair wild, mouth agape, making noises of which he previously didn’t know he was capable. 

“That’s it, come for me, I want to see you come,” John huffed, a low mantra urging Sherlock ever closer.

When he burst into John’s hand in a series of hot spurts, coating John’s hand and his own chest, John groaned and fell into Sherlock’s lips, licking inside desperately. 

Sherlock’s hand had slowed over John, lost in his own pleasure, but now his focus shifted solely to bringing John to orgasm. 

In the early days at 221B (before the Fall), Sherlock had listened with interest (that he knew now was more than scientific) to John getting himself off. The shower was a common John wank locale, where Sherlock could discreetly lurk by the door and categorize John’s sounds and deduce his stroke speed. 

On a subconscious level, he had always known that he wanted to apply his theoretical knowledge to a practical setting. His findings had been thorough, and Sherlock thanked his former self as John was reduced to labored panting and frenzied moans over him. 

“John,” Sherlock started, his name tasting like warmth and home and pleasure on his tongue. John’s face was buried in the crook of Sherlock’s neck, now, and he made a questioning noise against it that vibrated through the space around Sherlock’s collarbone. 

And the words came so simply. “I love you, too.”

John moaned, nodding his head as if to say, _“That’s all I needed. Thank you, thank you.”_

John’s breath came faster, and it only took a few more tight strokes before John’s release. 

He cried Sherlock’s name as he came. 

***

Afterwards they laid breathless, lightly touching each other along chests, arms, hips, thighs as if to assure themselves that the other was real. John kissed him, pouring what seemed like all that was left of him into it. 

“Sh’lock. I love you,” John whispered against his lips, and Sherlock licked around them to taste it. “I love you.” 

It seemed he couldn’t stop confessing. 

“I love you too, John.” 

John shifted so that his hand rested on Sherlock’s chest, his left leg thrown over Sherlock’s thighs, and his head on the same pillow. 

The posh duvet was covered in a mix of their semen, and so was Sherlock’s chest. He decided he really didn’t mind. 

John seemed to have the same thought as his fingers grazed the mess on Sherlock’s chest. “We really should clean up.” 

Sherlock sighed. “That would require leaving this bed.” 

John chuckled. “Planning on never getting up, then?”

Sherlock gave John a pointed look, his eyes devouring John’s body and landing on his crotch. It was softening, now, but still resting heavily over his bollocks. It was delicious. “Obviously not.” 

John ran a hand through Sherlock’s hair, straightening the frustrated pieces over his forehead, careful not to disturb the bandage. He looked like he was about to say something, ask something, but he was interrupted by what sounded like a detonation of 16,000 explosives. 

John stood, hurriedly pulling on his pants to open the curtain. 

In fact, it _was_ a detonation of 16,000 explosives. 

John glanced at the clock and turned to him, smiling. “Happy New Year.” 

“Happy New Year, John.” 

The view out their window was a blinding display of New Year’s fireworks shooting off of the Taipei 101 building. The building was consumed by them, and the exhibition looked like it violated about a hundred safety codes. 

Dangerous fireworks. They were the only kind of fireworks Sherlock enjoyed. 

“A bit cliche, isn’t it?” Sherlock said, not minding one bit, taking in the highlighted view of John’s arse in his pants. 

John tilted his head in put-upon consideration. “Depends. Is it cliche to say the light from the fireworks is making you look especially…” he paused, unsure of the rightness of the word. “Beautiful?” 

Sherlock’s chest lurched. If Sherlock was beautiful, then John was breathtaking, the grand finale of a fireworks display. His voice came out in a dry whisper. “I don’t mind.” 

John’s eyes were filled with emotion, glinting with the hint of a specific memory. “I don’t mind, either.” 

Sherlock cleared his throat, the heaviness of the space between them close to activating his tear ducts. “Well, then. Come be cliche and ring in the New Year properly.” 

John wasted no time in striding across the room and jumping on the bed, on top of Sherlock. He kissed him, slow and deep, unhurried. 

Outside, there were loud cheers of “新年快樂 (Xīnnián kuàilè)!” and grand explosions of fireworks. But quite honestly, the only noises Sherlock cared to listen to were John Watson’s soft moans and gentle kisses. 

They kissed until the fireworks had long ended, until the stickiness on Sherlock’s chest was becoming uncomfortable for both of them. 

“You need a shower,” John said, though he didn’t particularly care about the mess. He brought his lips back to Sherlock’s. 

Sherlock raised an eyebrow. “So do you.” 

John smiled into his lips. “That gives me an idea.” John glanced to the bathroom suggestively.

“Mm. Clever boy.” 

In the shower, under scalding hot water, John’s back was pressed flush against Sherlock’s torso. His cock rested just above John’s arse, and it was extremely interested in the proceedings. When he had imagined sex with John, he had always envisioned John fucking him. He pictured being on his knees face down in a carpet, John pounding into him from behind. Or riding John’s lap on the 221B sofa. Or begging for it in an alley after a particularly invigorating case. His subconscious had deduced that these were the most likely scenarios, thus they became his fantasies. And he was certain he would still _very_ much enjoy all of that, but standing behind John, letting hot water run down them as he lathered soap all down John’s body, he wanted to know what it would feel like to be inside him. 

Now, he stroked John’s cock, eased by an expensive tea tree-scented body wash. John’s head was leaning back into his shoulder, having given into getting pleasured in this way. 

With his left hand, Sherlock grabbed at John’s hips and pulled him closer as he thrust his own hips to meet them. John lifted an arm to cup Sherlock’s neck, encouraging this. It seemed John was interested in the proceedings, as well. 

Sherlock mouthed as John’s ear as he softly stroked John to completion for a second time. John came with a low groan, this time in small, separate spurts. Sherlock was uncomfortably hard and completely untouched. 

Then John shocked him. He turned around, dropped to his knees on the tile, and licked the length of Sherlock’s cock. 

“Ohmygod, John,” he gasped. John looked up, gave him a questioning glance. Sherlock nodded enthusiastically, unable to articulate that _yes, yes of course John I didn’t think you would ever want this but I should have known you’ve always surprised me_ oh yes _you’ve always surprised me in the best ways._

“I want to taste you,” John said, and Sherlock grew impossibly harder. When John took him inside his mouth, his entire being went offline. He made a noise that was probably loud enough for the celebrators outside to hear. 

It didn’t take long for him to feel that tight ball of pleasure coming to a head, and he grabbed onto John’s hair in warning. John pulled off, catching bits of his release in his mouth, some on his chin. Sherlock greedily blocked the shower spray to deliberately stop the water from washing it off. 

“ _John_.” 

It was all he could say. 

***

The next morning, they had an early flight out of Taoyuan airport, but they had both slept exceedingly well. After ordering xiaolongbao from Foodpanda delivery for a late meal, they climbed into bed, sated. Sherlock had been wanting to return the favor from the moment John’s lips had touched his cock in the shower, and this morning, he had woken John in a decidedly pleasant way. 

Xiaowen had unexpectedly come to meet the two of them at the MRT station where they would take a train to the airport. 

“You look happy,” she greeted, and it sounded like both a question and an accusation. She had heard the office interaction, too, under the impression John drank the truth tea. In the wake of her own breakup, Sherlock was sure she wouldn’t be thrilled to face two people besotted with each other.

Was he _besotted_? Lord. He was. 

“Happy to be going home,” John said, and Sherlock briefly wondered what John pictured “home” to be. They had not discussed living arrangements, and there was Rosie to think about. 

Sherlock ran his eyes over Xiaowen’s uncombed short hair and the trousers and sweatshirt that were both one and a half sizes too big. Sherlock couldn’t hide his disbelief. “You slept with her last night.” 

John threw his face into his hands and Xiaowen gaped. “I…” 

“It’s obvious you didn’t stay at your Taipei apartment last night. You’re not a morning person, and there’s no way you would have made it here in time. Amy lives just one MRT stop from this station. Your clothes are not yours- neither the style nor the size is correct. The way you’re leaning your body weight to the left side suggests that you spent the night lying on your right, your arm likely underneath another person. You usually sleep on your left side, so your sleep was agitated.”

For a moment, it looked like Xiaowen was going to punch him. But after a moment, her expression turned into a devilish grin. “You slept with him.” 

John shot Sherlock a nervous glance. Sherlock nearly protested for John’s sake, but couldn’t bring himself to lie to her. She was nearly as skilled as him when it came to telling if someone was lying- she invented truth tea. 

“Yes. And it was spectacular,” he answered. He thought John would turn away in embarrassment, or punch his arm, or apologize, but he did none of those things. Instead, he pulled at Sherlock’s shirt and went up on his toes to kiss him. In public. 

“I see you worked it out, then,” she said with a hint of sadness. “Amy and I are done. Staying over was just…”

“A last hurrah?” Sherlock finished for her, and she nodded.

“I was going to say a mistake, but that works.” 

John reached out a hand, and she took it. “Take care, Xiaowen. Maybe next time I can actually be a real tourist here.” 

She laughed, her eyes crinkling. “After our day yesterday, I’m sure you’re ready to get the hell out of here.” 

Sherlock gave her a kiss on the cheek, emboldened by John’s public display of physical affection. “Enjoy your new lab. By all means, please order some expensive, ridiculous piece of equipment on my behalf as a middle finger to my big brother.” 

Xiaowen put on her horrid British accent again. “ _Mycroft Holmes_ will just be delighted his brother made a friend.” 

John snorted. “Speaking from experience…don’t know about that one, mate.” 

***

The plane ride back to London was considerably more enjoyable than the journey to Taiwan. John fell asleep on his shoulder. 

They did, however, abstain from tea. 

A week in London passed quickly. Scotland Yard was inundated with post-holiday cases, and Sherlock spent his days with Lestrade. John was back at the surgery after holiday break. The only thing that had changed was that John was spending nights at 221B, Rosie tucked in his old bedroom. He still had his old flat, though, and occasionally returned there for clothes and items for Rosie. 

One night, Sherlock wandered up the stairs of 221B, totally spent. He had just solved a robbery involving a particularly high-speed running chase through London, and he was not as agile as he used to be. His feet were sore.

“Joooohn,” he called, falling onto the couch in a total surrender by his limbs. Shit, what time was it? Nighttime, he was sure. He probably shouldn’t be yelling. 

For two minutes too long, there was no response, and Sherlock wondered if John had gone back to his other flat tonight, leaving him to the abysmal loneliness of Johnlessness. 

But after a moment, Sherlock heard footsteps, and John padded out of the bedroom ( _their_ bedroom) and switched on the light in the kitchen before wandering into the sitting room. He was wearing pyjama bottoms, a vest, and Sherlock’s blue dressing gown. It was much too long for him, but something about John wearing his clothes stirred his lower abdomen. He reached out for the silky fabric, arm flailing in John’s general direction. He hadn’t the energy for exactitudes. “Sit with me.”

John lifted Sherlock’s feet to join him on the couch, putting them back down over his lap once he was sitting. His fingers pressed expertly into the balls of Sherlock’s feet, and the pure pleasure of it made Sherlock groan loudly.

“Shh, love,” John soothed. “It’s half ten. Rosie’s asleep.” 

Sherlock discovered this week that John had an affinity for pet names. He was particularly prone to use them before sex ( _darling_ ), during sex ( _love_ ), and after sex ( _sweetheart_ ), but Sherlock loved when he used them like this, when they were just being together. 

Sherlock was so distracted by the relief in his feet that it took him a moment to realize that John was asking him about the case. 

“Easy to solve, not as easy to catch. Boring. But tiring,” Sherlock said, yawning. He didn’t particularly care to get into the details at the moment. They were boring. Much less exciting than the sensations happening in his soles. 

“Wish I could’ve joined you,” John said, a bit regretfully. 

Sherlock hummed his agreement. If it weren’t for the fact that he could tell John was holding onto words, that he wanted to say something else, Sherlock would have drifted off to sleep. But even as his fingers rubbed relaxing concentric circles over Sherlock’s Baxter nerve, Sherlock could sense that John wanted something. He quietly asked, “What is it, John?”

John stilled for a moment. “I thought, tonight. Maybe I could…make myself a cuppa.” 

These being the words he was holding onto made Sherlock question his hearing. “John. You really don’t need my approval for every-…” 

“No. Sherlock.” John took his hands off his feet, and he instantly missed them. This business about the tea was ridiculous. “I want to _make a cup of tea._ High mountain tea.”

 _Oh._ Much more interesting. 

John continued, “I know I’m not very good at saying things. Haven’t been.” 

He was correct there. The two of them had a rather unsavory track record when it came to open, honest, vulnerable communication. 

“We have that bit of Xiaowen’s tea left, and I’ve been thinking you might want to talk to Truth Tea John,” he said, and Sherlock loved him impossibly more. He already had 127 different questions he could ask, but it wasn’t the possibility of knowledge that moved him. It was John’s willingness to be irrevocably open with him in this way. 

“John,” he whispered, his name falling somewhere in the space between respect and worship. “Thank you, truly, but you don’t have to-”

“I want to,” John interrupted, stubbornly determined. “I want to be able to give this to you.” 

Sherlock nodded, understanding. Upon telling Molly about the new development in his relationship with John, she had forced a heinous Internet quiz onto him about “love languages.” To add interest to the mind-numbing series of obvious questions, he took the quiz as if he were John and discovered that John shows love through acts of service. Which, obviously, he was able to identify before the quiz. The quiz had only given it a name. 

Sherlock also showed love through acts of service, but he certainly appreciated words of affirmation- words of affirmation that the tea would undoubtedly coax from John’s lips. 

“Okay.” 

John made the tea while Sherlock had a quick shower and changed into pyjamas. By the time he emerged from the bathroom, John’s teacup was almost empty. He was sitting in his chair, a fire lit, the very image of home. Sherlock joined him, sitting in his own chair. He spread his legs long, inching his foot close to John’s. He could smell the light floral hints and the muskiness of oolong permeating the room. John’s face was entirely too readable and open. Sherlock’s stomach did a flip at the possibilities with this pliable John. 

John closed his eyes and inhaled. “You smell so delicious after a shower.” 

“What do I smell like?” Sherlock knew exactly how he smelled. 

“Like lavender. And sandalwood. And tea tree.” John inhaled again. “You use such posh bath product, the smell lasts for hours.” 

“Mm.” He ran a hand through his own hair, knowing it would send a fresh wave of scent in John’s direction. 

“Makes me think of 221B. And sex.” 

Sherlock shivered. “How long?”

John tilted his head in question. 

“How long has it made you think of sex?” 

John smiled coyly. “You’re asking me how long I’ve wanted you.” 

He chewed on his thumbnail as he studied the man in front of him. “In the nature of full disclosure. Yes.” 

“I wanted you that first night. The very first night we met.” He ran his tongue over his bottom lip in the exact same way he had at Angelo’s. _So, you’ve got a boyfriend, then?_

Sherlock ached for all the lost time. The missed connections. But he wasn’t ready then. He had been a different man. They had both been different men, then. 

“I deduced it.” 

“You did.” 

“Why did you deny it?”

“Imagine the other way round. You never would’ve let me on the lease,” John laughed. “I’d just been sent home from the army. I’d made some rejected male advances in my time there, I knew how to play it off.” 

Sherlock had to know. “You and Sholto.” 

John nodded. “We had a close relationship. Or at least, as much of a relationship as two officers can secretly have in the army. If you’re asking if we had sex- yes.”

Sherlock bristled. His jealousy had been founded. 

“Hey, there’s nothing to be jealous of. I didn’t even know you existed yet,” John said, seemingly finding Sherlock’s display amusing. “It was nothing like what you and I have. Me and James used each other to survive. But you, Sherlock. You make surviving feel like living.” John’s voice caught. “You make my life worth living. You have since the day I met you.” 

He had suspected as much, had deduced John’s depressive tendencies the day they met. 

“As you mine,” Sherlock said, his voice low. 

The fire crackled in the silence between them. 

“It’s been hard for me, not knowing what’s real and what’s not,” John said, finally. They were entering Do Not Discuss territory. 

“I know.” 

“The TD-12 makes everything foggy. The truth tea helped for a bit, but most of the time I feel like I’m living two separate timelines simultaneously, the one in my head and the one in reality.” 

Sherlock felt a stab of guilt. “Yes, that seems to be the case.” 

A spark of anger flashed on John’s face. “Will you tell me what happened? Everything, Sherlock. Not the watered-down version. I’m not a child.” 

Sherlock looked him directly in the eye, wanting badly to give this to him, but knowing this was not the time. “Yes. I promise I will give you the full version, on my turn with the truth tea. But tonight I ask you the questions.” 

John considered this compromise and agreed. 

“When did you know you loved me?” he asked. Sherlock figured he ought to ask the big ones before the tea’s effects subsided. 

“I felt it from the beginning. But I suppose I didn’t realize it or accept it until Irene.” 

The Woman. “Really?” After all of John’s ridiculous implications about the two of them. 

“Of course, _really_. I’m physically incapable of lying at the moment.” 

Sherlock smiled, but it faded as he thought of his next question. “If you knew, why…” his voice lowered to a whisper, afraid to ask, “Why did you marry her?” 

John looked like he was punched in the chest. Quite deservedly, actually. Sherlock had taken a bullet there. 

“I didn’t think you would ever love me,” John confessed, and it was so open and human it nearly broke him. 

Sherlock wanted to yell and cry and sulk about this, but his most immediate, overpowering reaction was to try and fix this perspective. This skewed, false perspective Sherlock had tried so hard to force on the world, only for John to internalize it. 

He stood, hovering over John sitting on his chair. John looked up with tears in his eyes. Sherlock inhaled a shaky breath. “I love you far more than I knew was capable for one person to love another. I love you so much it’s brought me back to life on more than one occasion. My mind is absolutely consumed by thoughts of you. I have an entire Mind Palace dedicated solely to you. I love you so much I want you here always.” 

John’s tears were steadily flowing, now. “Sherlock. I love you that much, too.” 

Sherlock brought his lips to John’s, and he gasped. The truth tea made John more receptive and less inhibited, so there was a special quality to John’s enthusiasm that he hadn’t yet experienced. The kiss instantly deepened, and Sherlock climbed onto John’s lap in his red chair, grinding into him.

“You’re the best shag I’ve ever had,” John mouthed into his ear. 

His cock twitched in his pyjamas. “Keep talking.” 

“I feel like a bloody teenager again. When you walk in the room, all I can think about is how to get your clothes off.” 

He moaned into John’s neck. He kept grinding into John’s groin, looking for friction. 

“The other night, when I fucked you for the first time, that was like a hundred of my wank fantasies coming true. You’re so gorgeous.” 

Oh. This could be an interesting line of questioning. “Wank fantasies?” 

John chuckled, low and breathy. He licked at Sherlock’s earlobe. “God, where to start?” 

They kissed again, the knowledge of a hundred fantasies fueling the heat between them. “Where did you shag me, in your fantasies?”

“Sometimes it was you shagging me,” John admitted. 

Oh. _Oh._

“John. Bedroom. Now.” 

Truth was power. And later, Sherlock felt the rush of it in their bedroom, with John reduced to simpers and whines beneath him, not holding a thing back as Sherlock pounded into him from above. 

It was so good, the tight feeling of filling John, becoming part of him in this state of openness. 

_“Ah,_ that’s so good Sherlock. You’re a bloody genius,” John panted, his heavy erection slapping noisily between their stomachs. “I don’t- oh- want this to ever stop.” 

Sherlock begged for John to come, and with a physical confirmation that John would do anything Sherlock asked of him, he did. 

With John spurting between them, tightening around his own cock, his own release was not far behind. A few more thrusts, and Sherlock was there, calling John’s name.

In their post-coital state of blissful truth, Sherlock asked John to move in to 221B. “You can always call this your home, John,” he said. 

John kissed him, and Sherlock reveled in the taste of sweat and tea and sex. 

“I already do. I always have,” John whispered against his lips, “Yes. A thousand times yes.”

**Author's Note:**

> Here’s a link to my original concept art for Xiaowen: https://disfictional.tumblr.com/post/640292946528354304/posting-here-so-i-can-link-on-ao3-my-original
> 
> And the story cover: https://disfictional.tumblr.com/post/638748109801914369/high-mountain-tea-leaves-by-disfictional


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